


hello there

by collectingnames



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 'If I cannot find trouble then I will make trouble', AU, Amnesia, Buried Alive, Cree (critical role) - Freeform, M/M, Mentions of Death, Molly comes back, Panic Attack (in ch3), Scars, Slow Burn, Tags will change as I add chapters, The Gentleman (critical role) - Freeform, bg yashter, but the premise hinges on name confusion so here we are, dancing lights, i love the tief sibs so much, jester gives molly a makeover, sorry for the inevitable name confusion, the mighty nein - Freeform, widomauk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2020-10-10 10:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20526254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collectingnames/pseuds/collectingnames
Summary: Mollymauk wakes up with almost no memory and the note the nein left him completely illegible--He woke up to his mouth filling with dirt the moment he tries to take a breath.  Darkness presses in from all sides, almost as suffocating as the dirt.  He feels a nail or two break as he scrapes upwards (or a best approximation of upwards) towards freedom.Air hits his lungs in short, greedy gasps, painfully good as he manages to make a large enough hole to stick his hand out and let in some air.





	1. new names

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! I wrote this to be self-contained but I see it having potential to be multichapter. Might come back and sprinkle in some edits. I was sitting on this idea basically the whole summer.  
Edit (notes part 2 electric boogaloo): Multichapter is happening! Tentatively gonna say weekend/monday updates but I don't know for sure yet(9/5/19)

He woke up to his mouth filling with dirt the moment he tries to take a breath. Darkness presses in from all sides, almost as suffocating as the dirt. He feels a nail or two break as he scrapes upwards (or a best approximation of upwards) towards freedom.

Air hits his lungs in short, greedy gasps, painfully good as he manages to make a large enough hole to stick his hand out and let in some air. Both his muscles and his lungs burn as it takes fucking everything in him to pull himself free of the earth. He collapses into a heap on the ground. A more sensible part of himself he isn't quite acquainted with yet tells him that he should move, find shelter, do something about his dry mouth and empty stomach, at the very least get somewhere where he isn't so exposed. He isn’t cold though. It’s like his blood is pulsing against his skin as eager to escape as he’d escaped his own grave. Looking down he finally notices the filthy tapestry he’s been wrapped in. With clumsy hands that were still readjusting to being alive again he pulls it off to wrap it around his shoulders. In the shifting he feels something against his chest, paper?

He pulls a note from inside his long-dried bloody shirt. Not a word of it is legible, the whole thing, ink smudged by dirt and mud and who knows what else? He can make out some capital letters that could have been names of people or places, maybe a handful of question marks. Wait. What _ is _ his name? He pats himself down as if the answer would be found etched somewhere into his skin, hidden in the scales of the red-eyed snake curled around his arm or the petals that that same snake hides in. Intuitively he knows it wouldn’t be in the sun or the moon or the all-seeing eye gracing his back and shoulders. But maybe it would be in the strange red eye placed squarely in the middle of a jagged scar that cut along his sternum. 

That one, that one feels as if it can see him and doesn’t like what it sees. He pulls his shirt closed and takes another crack at the note. Now that his eyes have adjusted he can begin to make out, well, guess at a few of the words. Something long that starts with an ‘N’, likely the name of a place. A few ‘the’s were clear enough but the words around them are obliterated. He crumples the note up in one hand, the paper doesn’t crunch, too damp from the earth to do that.

“Shit!” He shouts to no one in particular when an attempt to get up to his feet reduces his legs to jelly. But there’s a stick, planted firm into the ground marking where he’d just dug himself out and he holds tight to it.

_ A name, I need a name, what’s my fucking name? _ Another curse falls from his lips in a tongue he only has some intuitive understanding of. It takes another minute but the word edges its way into his mind. What was at first a whisper is now a chest-shaking chant. The name echoes in his mind over and over again. _ Caleb _ . _ Caleb, Caleb, Caleb, Caleb, Caleb. _ His heart backflips at the sound of it. His newly alive mind can't make sense of the reaction. But it’s the only name his mind can conjure.

He swallows thickly trying to wet his throat and tries it out, "Caleb."

It feels right, and familiar on his tongue. He’s definitely said it a million times before, before he was ever put in that grave. Whenever the fuck that happened. Not that how long he’s been down there matters too much at the moment. Town, have to find a town. He digs in a heel and yanks the grave-marking stick free with a grunt. Caleb shuffles down the road towards where he assumes town must be.

So Shady Creek Run, as he later learns the name of it, is a bust. He’d gotten one look at the place through the gates and decides against it. He turns tail and walks back the way he’d come, there had to be someplace to stop. Though his legs decide where they were gonna stop for the night when he collapses in sight of another city. His eyes flicker shut still transfixed on the globules of colorful light exploding in the sky above the city.

Small hands drag him along the road. Easily two or three sets of hands tug at his shoulders, give up on that, then wrap him up in the tapestry he’s been wearing as a cloak and pull him along the road like that.

“Sir are you alright?” Morning light streaks around the gnome-sized person trying to talk to him.

His throat cries out for water. He mimes picking up a cup and drinking from it and that seems to make the stranger understand.

The stranger runs out for a moment and comes back with a tall glass of water, helps him with it when he fumbles to hold it and spills some down his front, “Better?”

He wipes his mouth on the back of the tattooed hand, “Yeah, thank you.”

The stranger steps out of the sunrise where he could actually see them, “What were you doing out there? We were on our way back from Nogvurat when we found you on the road.”

Caleb’s hand goes to his chest, where the red eye feels like it’s pulsing in anger, “I was just trying to find a town, picked a direction and started walking.”

“Okay, how’d you get so dirty, then?” the gnomish stranger continues.

“That would be on account of the dirt,” he flicks his tail for emphasis.

The stranger sighs and puts out a hand, “I’m Waywocket. I can’t do much for you but if there’s someplace specific you’re trying to go I might be able to help get you a ride.”

He gives Waywocket his name, “There’s a big town. It starts with an ‘N,’” another snippet of information comes back to him, “Near a coast.”

“Nicodranas? What are you trying to do getting out of the Empire?” Waywocket sits on the bed and stares at him curiously.

“It’s a place I remember. That’s about all I know,” he flashes a toothy smile that doesn’t seem to reassure his rescuer. 

“Okay, well, if it’s Nicodranas you need to be, then that’s where you’ll be. I’ll ask around, see if anyone is heading that way soon. In the meantime, maybe you should just take a few days to recover from whatever exactly happened to you,” Waywocket claps a hand down on his shoulder that shoots a pained grunt he hadn’t been expecting from him.

He cuts them off before they can try, “No need to apologize. Just tender, it’s not your fault.”

After a _ long _ nap, someone finally lets him know that this town is called Hupperdook and asks him again if he is _ absolutely certain _it is Nicodranas that he wants to go to, that it is quite a ways from here. Like with Waywocket the morning before he says yes. For now ‘big town that starts with an N near the coast’ and ‘Caleb’ are the only things he knows for certain about himself. Anything else is inferred from the few possessions he still has on him, the tapestry, the jewelry on his horns, his gravemarker, his tattoos. He thinks that maybe this should seem strange to him, that he should be perturbed by waking up buried and digging himself free with no memory other than a name that just the sound of sent his heart into acrobatics. But it all feels familiar.

He crawls out of the window that night to watch the fireworks from the rooftop. _ I’ve been here before _, a voice not quite his own blurts in his head. He can hear gravelly laughter from some broken memory of Hupperdook.

Waywocket sticks their head out the window, “Hey, what’re you doing up here?”

He points at one of the fireworks streaking its way across the sky on its way to explode, “Watching.”

“Huh, thought you might be trying to sneak away and get wasted,” they join him out in the cool night air.

He chuckles, “No, I don’t think my gut’s quite ready to do anything much stronger than bread and water yet.”

He can tell they’re staring at the scar going down their sternum, “You sure you don’t know what happened to you?”

“Haven’t the foggiest. Who knows? Maybe I’m some lost prince of a far-off dynasty slain by political enemies. Or an escaped sacrifice to a god, born like a lamb to slaughter. Or maybe I’m just unbearably clumsy,” huh, there’s one more thing he knows about himself now. Bullshitting comes as easy as breathing.

Waywocket screws up their nose at him, “You can’t lie to me.”

“I don’t know shit. How would I even know if I _ was _lying to you?” He playfully pokes them with his tail.

They sigh, “Ya know, I was kinda surprised when you told me your name is Caleb. It’s too ordinary for someone like you. I never would have taken you for a Caleb.”

“Ah I’m sure I’m full of all sorts of weirdness to make up for it. Don’t you worry about it,” he pulls himself back up and in through the window, “I think I’m gonna turn in for the night. See you in the morning.”

It takes about a week for Caleb to join up with a band of merchants headed to Nicodranas. It takes some convincing that this strange tiefling man without an ounce of copper on him and no recollection of anything was on the up and up but Waywocket manages to persuade them that he isn’t shady. Or at least trustworthy enough to dump him in Nicodranas and never think about him again. He may have slipped one of the trinkets pierced into his horns into Waywocket’s pocket in thanks for all their help.

Months pass. The news of the Empire’s war with Xhorhas isn’t just rumors anymore, it is very much real and Nicodranas’s tactical location puts it well within the Empire’s interests to protect it. Although whether or not that would do anything should the Xhorhasians turn their fury to the coast, no one was sure. Not that Caleb cares. What happened, happened. 

But for now, he is a barkeep in a tavern. One that pays him mostly in room and board. He loves the work though, has spent hours teaching himself tricks where he tosses the bottles through the air, even catching them with his tail. More than anything he has a constant stream of interesting people to talk to. Sellswords and sailors come into the tavern ready for a drink and someplace to brag about their exploits.

Tonight one of the larger, more colorful (even for sellswords) bands of adventurers comes into the tavern. Doesn’t see them come in though. Must have come looking for a room while he’d been on break. A half-orc with a goblin teasing him relentlessly, weaving between his legs whenever he tries to pick her up and get her to stop. A blue tiefling woman with a permanent veneer of mischief in her face recounting a pink-haired firbolg with the tale of some torrid romance. One of them looks human enough but something in the air told him that she was something else. The not-quite-human enjoys the mutual silence of a friend who also appreciates a moment’s silence. Seated on either side of her are two humans. An excited woman with a gravelly voice, dressed mostly in blue, and with her hair pulled up in a top-knot, and a sullen-looking man with copper hair all but hides in his soiled overcoat, with his back to him. 

He slips out from behind the bar to approach these colorful sellswords. _ Talk to them _, he lets the voice in his head guide him forwards towards the seven.

“Hello, name’s Caleb. Can I get you folks anything?” 

Well, that isn’t the reaction he’d been expecting.

Which one of the seven lost their shit first he isn’t sure. The buff not-quite-human woman stands up from her chair with tears already brimming in her mismatched eyes. The excitable tiefling starts buzzing like an out of control firecracker at the sight of him. The human woman may be fighting back the urge to one hit k.o. him with furious tears making her eyes go bloodshot. The firbolg and half-orc are both confused but it’s shock more than anything else in the scarred brow of the half-orc. His firbolg companion genuinely doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening and only reacting in turn with his companions.

He breaks the silence that settles over them as he watches them freak out, “No need to get so excited on my account.”

“Mollymauk…,” the name tumbles from the dirty, copper-headed man in an accent that he all at once doesn’t remember and makes his heart go into acrobatics for the first time since he dug himself out from the side of the road all those months ago.

The copper-headed man turns the rest of the way around so as not to look at him over his shoulder and stands. His eyes scream some sort of plea to the universe of _ please let this be real _. This strange, dirty man puts out a hand to touch him. At first, he thinks the hand would rest on his shoulder but instead reaches up further, almost cradling his face when Caleb snapped himself out of the moment.

His facade cracks for a second, before recovering and joking, “Now, now, we’re not that kind of establishment here.”

The stranger pushes deeper into his space and holds his face in both hands. Palms meeting cheeks brought tears to his face, “Mollymauk…_ you’re alive _.”

“Well I sure hope I am. Cynthia still owes me three silver,” despite his jokes the sorrow and joy in this man’s face when he looks at him makes it hard to keep up the unaffected demeanor.

A strangled laugh punches its way out of the stranger, “Mollymauk, _ please, _ we are your **friends** . Do you remember us? It’s me, _ Caleb _.”

“Are you lot the motherfuckers that buried me outside of Shady Creek Run?” His brain finally manages to slot together a few pieces of this puzzle seated at the table in front of him.

He nods, “Please,” and held him in an embrace so tight he must have feared that if he let go for too long he would disappear, “Please, Mollymauk, you have to remember. _ You are right here in front of me, warm as the living, don’t you fucking make me lose you again _ . _ Not when you are here. Not when I can feel your pulse under my fingers. _”

His arms don’t obey the order to try and pry the other man off of him, “Sir, I don’t know who this Mollymauk is but he must be a very lucky man. All that dirt doesn’t fool me, I know a handsome man when I see one.”

He desperately wants one of the handsome, dirty stranger’s friends to speak up and interrupt whatever the hell is happening but they all sit there in stunned silence as the scene unfolds.

“I know who you are Mollymauk Tealeaf, even if you don’t,” a shock runs through him at the words, and another when Caleb takes the snake on his hand in one of of his own and the red-eyed peacock feather creeping onto his cheek in the other. “These eyes. There are more, yes? One on your back? And I suppose now there is one on your chest. Have you had a chance to put ink to it yet?”

He gulps, “I-. Sir, I need you to let go of me. My name is Caleb, not Mollymauk. I’m very sorry for your loss, really, I am. This must be some case of mistaken identity.”

“Ah, _ Arschloch _, Mollymauk Tealeaf, you truly are a bastard, in this life and the next,” the stranger’s chest trembles against his own.

He snaps out of it, snatches the dirty stranger’s face in both hands and pulls out of his grasp, “**I. Don’t. Know. You**.”

One of his hands works its way into his hair, cards through the locks. His breath catches in his throat. There it is again, the acrobatics in his chest. He may not know the man standing in front of him but his skin knows his hands. His head knows to lean into the touch. His eyes know to look only at the tempest blue ones staring back at him.

He’s trying to be coy but he can feel the calloused hands tremble with relief at his reaction, “Ah, but it seems you do, _ mein Schatz _.”

  


  



	2. We Have That In Common

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yasha notices Molly get overwhelmed and pulls him out of the situation before it can get out of hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI! Yes, thanks a million to the user who encouraged me to continue this. I don't know how long this is going to go one for but I really wanted Molly & Yasha stuff. I normally won't update this quickly. I'm very new to this and still figuring it out. (The next chapter will also be Molly & Yasha)

That final line seems to unleash the remaining six on him. He can’t pick a single person to focus his attention on with all of them hitting him with rapid-fire questions and proclamations of how glad they were to see him again, that they had missed him. Well, except for the firbolg whose name he wouldn’t know even if he could remember the rest of the people he’s apparently lived out a whole other life with. He tries reaching for a weapon on his hip that isn’t there to try and make them back off. His mouth feels like sandpaper the more they encroach into his space.

How the massive not-quite-human woman manages to slip around and to his rear he isn’t sure. Someone of that stature has no business moving so noiselessly. Rough fingers curl loose around his wrist and the sound of some distraction elsewhere in the tavern is all it takes for him to get pulled away from the situation.

He’s standing alone in the sidestreet with her. The gentle frown might just be a permanent fixture of her intense eyes, a storminess distinct from the other Caleb’s.

“I’m sorry. You looked overwhelmed. I thought you might need to get away,” her voice, gentle as her frown, doesn’t surprise him.  
He gives her a pat on the bicep, “Thanks.” A strong breeze bashes the sea salt scent of the ocean into his face and the idea hits him, “How about we go down to the beach? Quieter there. Should take longer to find us if they decide to follow.”  
She nods yes and follows him as he turns to make his way.

The entire walk to the sands of the Menagerie Coast is silent. Though the silence doesn’t feel awkward. She’s not someone who needs to constantly speak so even if his normally incessant mouth is struggling to find words he doesn’t have to speak with her.

Sitting in the sand with his feet in the surf he finally starts to some up with the words he wants to say.  
But she beats him to the punch, “How long have you been back?”  
His hand trails along the scar on his chest, he hadn’t considered putting ink to the eye that runs through it but the suggestion is planted firmly in his head now, “A few months.”  
Yasha draws spirals in the sand with a finger instead of making eye contact, “I thought you would come back. But I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Didn’t want to lose you a second time because I got stupid and hopeful.”  
“You aren’t stupid,” He gets the sense she has a habit of telling herself unkind things.  
“Fine, foolish then!” Yasha’s shoulders tremble, if not for his darkvision he probably wouldn’t have noticed.  
“Come on now miss… ,” it’s in part the realization that he doesn’t know her name and in part prompting her to give him her name.  
“Molly, do you really not know my name? It hasn’t come back to you?” Yasha’s sadness is quiet, cold and strikes him silently, where the other Caleb’s is loud, firey and makes a scene in taverns.  
He doesn’t hate this other name the strangers are calling him but they say it so easily and with such familiarity, “Things come back in snippets, so far only little things and vague feelings, muscle memory apparently,” there’s a protracted pause where the two of them just sit in the moonlight, “Can you run me through the names again?”  
“Of course,” and that draws the first smile he’s seen from her in this life.

He outright chortles at the way she describes some of them. But for the most part it confirms some of the impressions he had of them when he’d first noticed their table. Though he can’t deny that her description of the other Caleb feels incomplete somehow. Not that he would know how to fill it in.

Yasha sighs, looking out over the ocean when she finishes going through each member of the Mighty Nein, “You know, you’re much more comfortable hearing about your past this time around.”

_This time_.

Somehow Yasha’s casual mention that this isn’t his first time spitting in the face of death rattles him. It’s not the cool breeze blowing across the water that raises goosebumps along his skin. The thought of being cursed to dig himself free of the earth’s embrace into eternity turns his blood to ice. _There really is no rest for the wicked_, Caleb muses.

One of her rough hands rests on his back, between his shoulderblades, “What do I need to say to prove to you that we know each other, that we’re friends?”  
The suggestion that she would need to prove herself to him sends a jolt of anger through his gut, that she feels she needs to ask. Even if she hadn’t been regaling him with colorful descriptions of the Mighty Nein for the past ten or so minutes. Even if she hadn’t spotted his tells that they were overwhelming him and pulled him out of that situation. He would still trust her. But he course corrects before he starts speaking, “No, you don’t have to do any such thing. Even if I don’t remember you now I trust you already. _You don’t need to prove yourself to me_. **_I would never ask you to_**.”  
Panic flickers in his mind for a second when he hears her breath catch in her throat but she shrugs it off and pulls a leather-bound journal from her bag, the spine crackles a little when she opens it up, the pages brim with pressed flowers, “I sort of collect them as I go. I’ll just see a pretty flower by the road and grab it most of the time.”  
“If you’re trying to take me down memory lane you don’t have to. I already told you, you don’t have to prove anything to me,” he tries to put a stop to wherever he thinks this is going.  
Yasha stops, a hand raised to leaf through the pages, “There’s one I want you to see.”  
He eases up and leans against her shoulder, the way his horn presses against her puts his head at an odd angle but he doesn’t mind, “Show me.”

Yasha flips through the pages looking for it and quickly finds the correct place. A silk snapdragon, pressed flat to the page stares back up at him. The delicately sewn trinket takes up a whole page, and is arranged to make it the center of attention. His hands know the feeling of that silk between his thumb and index finger.

Yasha chuckles, “You got me this one while we were in Hupperdook. You said it was because ‘these ones won’t die.’”  
It comes out as a joke, “Guess we have that in common, then.”

The walk back to the tavern is easy and relaxed. This time around he has no problem supplying most of the conversation, where the reserved Yasha is more than willing to listen and chime in with hearty laughs. It feels right. It feels right to ramble and goof off and jokingly punch each other in the shoulder when one of them sees something funny. _I would gladly meet you a million times. I could do without the dying. But I think so long as we meet, it’s going to be okay._

When they make it back to the Withered Bird Inn the crowd has thinned. He can’t spot the Might Nein anywhere among the tables and Yasha doesn’t seem to spot them either.

“I have a room here,” Caleb speaks up, “we can keep talking there if you’d like. I’m really getting a kick out of hearing about ‘Mollymauk.’”  
The audible air quotes make her lips pull in a frown for a moment but he gets that smile back, gentle as her frown but warm. It feels like sunbathing in spring to watch her smile, “I’d like that.”


	3. This Happened Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He and Yasha have to address the biggest elephant in the room.  
\--  
Caleb’s room is nestled into a back corner of the first floor of The Withered Bird. A mattress is pushed into a corner on the floor and the sheets are piled up into a nest of blankets and pillows. The platinum dragon tapestry is tacked up above it, along with any other colorful thing he’s managed to get his hands on, along the walls. His few belongings are shoved haphazardly into a canvas bag tipped onto its side.
> 
> He turns on the ball of his foot and flops down into the blanket nest, “Come on now, don’t be a stranger.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I'll get back around to the romance stuff eventually. Tagged it as slow burn for a reason
> 
> Tags Specific to this chapter: Panic attacks (Molly hears the name 'Lucien' and it sends him into a brief panic attack)

Caleb’s room is nestled into a back corner of the first floor of The Withered Bird. A mattress is pushed into a corner on the floor and the sheets are piled up into a nest of blankets and pillows. The platinum dragon tapestry is tacked up above it, along with any other colorful thing he’s managed to get his hands on, along the walls. His few belongings are shoved haphazardly into a canvas bag tipped onto its side.

He turns on the ball of his foot and flops down into the blanket nest, “Come on now, don’t be a stranger.”

Yasha’s warm smile stays as she looks around the walls at the kaleidoscopic pattern he’s made, “This is definitely your room.”**  
**

“It took for fucking ever to get the tapestry clean but I managed it,” he mentions when he notices her gaze linger on it.

She puts a careful hand to it, tracing the silver thread, the smile turns into a grin, “I remember this. You got it back in Zadash.”

“Oh? And what did I do with it?” Caleb returns her grin with a toothy one.

“Jester got us rooms at this fancy hotel. You bought some company for the night and when you came back into our room you were only wearing the tapestry holding a plate of fruit. Gods, you said something. It really stuck in my head back when you said it,” she puts her arms out like she has it wrapped around her and tries closing her eyes to help remember, “I’m your god! I reign forever!”

He guffaws at the display, “HA! Long may I reign!”

“That’s it! That’s what you said! I was close,” she flops down next to him in the blanket nest, still giggling.

He tests the phrase on his tongue again, “Long may I reign.” He can’t remember for sure if he’s said it before but it flows better than Yasha’s first guess.

Yasha looks back up at the tapestry, “You said it was dirty?”

“Yeah, I was wrapped in it when I woke up. Made a good cloak though,” he can already feel the specter of his resurrection settling over the room.

“Oh, I wondered what they did with it. They’d buried you already by the time they freed us,” she tries to move her eyes away from the tapestry to the other decorations but they keep easing back towards it.

He forces back his nerves before an awkward silence can choke the room, “So, you said this happened before?”

She takes a second, hesitant to respond, “Yes.”

“What happened the first time?” His voice is dead serious, a tone that feels alien on his tongue.

“Well, ah, what state were you in when you woke up this time?”

"What do you mean?" Asking anything about his death sparks the skin-crawling sense that the eye on his chest can see him.

Yasha’s voice seems torn between the relief that he’s back and something bittersweet he can’t place, "When we met the first time you couldn't really speak. Well, you could kind of speak. But not really. You were just saying 'empty'. You couldn't talk properly for a while. I don't think you were all there. You had trouble keeping anything down. Just sort of stared off into space most of the time while you were recovering."

"Do you know how it happened?"

"No, I didn’t know you before. It was me and the others at the carnival that found you.” Carnival? Yeah, that tracks. One more thing he knows about himself. 

"So how did it happen this time?” As blase as he’d been about it back in Hupperdook he still hasn’t managed to say ‘death’, especially not with Yasha.

“You were trying to rescue me, and Fjord and Jester. You tried to do the blood thing that you do with your swords,” she puts up a fist to her mouth and screws her eyes shut, takes a deep breath to steady herself before she finishes, “But you were already pretty badly injured. You just knocked yourself out. And then, he finished you off. You spit in his face.”

He latches onto the brief mention of it instead of lingering on the mental image sparking to life in his head, “Blood thing? Is that what’s been up with me?”

The worry in her voice is unmistakable, “What are you talking about?”

“When I dug myself out it felt like my blood was trying to escape my body. Like it was burning against my skin,” Caleb still remembers it in blindingly bright detail, almost like his mind was compensating for not remembering his life before by perfectly remembering his first memory of this one.

"Huh, that's strange. Maybe it is. Man, Lucien really fucked you up," Yasha muses to herself.

Hearing the name makes his stomach curl in on itself. All of the other things he’s heard from his past invokes some inkling of recollection. Lucien, throws him into a void. The eye on his chest can see him now, he’s certain of it. And it pulses in time with the terrified thrumming of his heart in his chest. His arms grab themselves and reassure him that he’s still here. That he isn’t unravelling where sharp metal slices him open and cuts his heart in two. That the light is still here and it’s just nighttime. Still, a migraine beats against the part of his skull just between his horns and the pain makes his stomach knot even tighter. He sits there nestled in the blankets, panting, eyes not quite seeing.

Yasha takes one of his wrists, “Molly?”

It takes a few attempts at gulping before he can get the words out, “Who’s that?”

“Molly are you okay? What just happened?” She presses, taking his other wrist too.

“Who’s that?” He doesn’t repeat the name just to be safe.

“Who you were before you were Mollymauk. You seemed convinced that he’d done something awful. That he was a bad person and you wanted nothing to do with him. That you’d just taken his body. Not that you were him,” she’s startled by how sharp his tone goes so quickly.

“Is this? Is this how I reacted before?” he turns his hand in her grip so he can grip back, eyes scouring hers for an answer.

She shakes her head no and the sounds of little beads and metal trinkets in her hair fills the silence in the room. Her eyes go wide when she remembers something, “The Gentleman! There was this tabaxi woman who works for him! She knew about, uh, she knew about him.”

Caleb has no fucking clue who she’s talking about. Just that whoever The Gentleman is, he has access to someone who knows about Lucien, “Where is he? Do you know if she’s still there?”

“"In Zadash. We don't really do much for him anymore. I don’t know if she would still be there. Oh shit do we tell him you're alive? What if he can tell you're alive that way? With our blood. He has vials of our blood," her eyes share some of his fears but she stays substantially calmer than him.

He makes a mental note to never set foot in Zadash, or anyplace else where there are people connected to him, "Whoever he is he's had months to realize I'm alive, I think we're good for now."

Caleb flops face-first into the blankets, twisting out of Yasha’s grip. The pain in his skull hasn’t let up, and even then, it’s been a long night. Yasha gives his shoulder a light shake, backs off when he grumbles something in response, enough to let her know that he’s still alive.

It doesn’t take long for her to settle down next to him, lying flat on her back. Takes even less time for him to fall asleep, his tail curled around her leg. Her hand flops into his hair at some point in the night. Like the fireworks in Hupperdook, he knows it intuitively. They’ve shared beds, haphazard piles of blankets and pillows, soft patches of dirt. She’s been there next to him, radiating a warmth that pulls him in as a cool summer night’s breeze slips through the flaps of a tent. In times past the bed protected them from bare ground and not a wooden floor. 

When morning finally comes he wakes with a gasp, startled by a dream he can’t remember. Just that he can feel it in his bones that something is wrong. That somebody told him something important that he needs to remember. With some difficulty he manages to unlace his tail from Yasha's leg without waking her up. He creeps out of the room, leaving the door ajar instead of risking the click of it shutting waking her up.

The innkeeper isn't hard to find, already checking the ledger, "Yes, Caleb?"

"I have some personal business I need to take care of-," he starts to explain.

He doesn't look up from his work, waving him off, "Yeah, yeah, go, take the day, don't need any repeats of last night spooking customers. Whatever it is get it dealt with. I'll get someone to fill in for you."

"Thank you," he's almost back to the door, where he can see Yasha starting to open it through the crack when he hears several sets of footsteps approach from upstairs.

Yasha looks over his shoulders by the time the rest of the Nein have made their way down the stairs and in view of the two of them. He shuffles over a step so he's standing shoulder-to-horn with her, arms crossed over his chest. The six adventurers shoot a few glances between themselves to figure out who's going to talk first. He makes a point of not looking the other Caleb in the eye, a gesture that the other Caleb returns effortlessly. His eyes never leave the floorboards.

Nott speaks up first, "So, we squeeze in whatever shopping and other business we need to do and make it over to the Lavish Chateau by the afternoon?"

“That’s the plan,” Fjord steals a few looks at him but doesn’t make eye contact.

Jester is far too awake for the early hour, “Well what are we waiting for then? Come on! Oh, you’re going to love my mama, Molly!”

He doesn’t say it with any menace but there’s still a bite to it when he pats Yasha’s shoulder, “Yasha can call me ‘Mollymauk.’ The point stands from last night. I don’t know any of you.”

He sees her choke back a frown and regrets saying it for half a second. But it’s only half a second. Yasha and he rushes to grab their things before setting out. The two of them take up the rear once they hit the streets of Nicodranas. As they walk, Caduceus stares over his shoulder at him without trying to hide what he’s doing. The firbolg looks him over as if committing him to memory or searching for some answers.

Caduceus finally breaks stride with Jester to match pace with himself and Yasha, “Excuse me, can I have a moment alone with you?”

He needs a second to regain his bearings. If Yasha towers over him, Caduceus dwarfs him and his eyes are unrelenting in their search. “Hm? Now?”

“Yes, I just think there’s a lot that needs to be sorted out,” Caduceus speaks in an even, affable voice.

“Can Yasha-?” He starts.

Caduceus cuts him off, “No need, we won’t be straying too far from the group. I just think we really ought to talk.”

“About?” Molly rises up onto his tiptoes in a vain attempt to get on Caduceus’s eye level, “What are you supposed to be? My replacement?”

Not that it has any bite to it, he doesn't remember enough for the idea that he’s been replaced to get under his skin, but Caduceus is eerily silent in response. So that’s a yes then.

“Alright then,” he taps Yasha’s shoulder where she’s been lost in thought as they walk, gives her dagger on his belt a pat to reassure her that he has some means of defending himself, “‘Duecy and I are just gonna step out for a minute.”

“Oh! Okay, be safe?” It’s hesitant enough to turn into a question.

“We’re going to stay close. Got it?” He half-threatens him.

“You have every reason not to trust me, Caleb,” Caduceus strikes back without his even-keeled tone faltering even slightly.

Even if he knew what to say he wouldn’t say it. He just stands there in Caduceus’s insightful stare until he turns away to lead them somewhere.


	4. Eyes of the Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caduceus tests out a theory  
\-----  
Caleb immediately picks up on the direction Caduceus is leading him once they take one too many turns. At first, he didn’t want to say anything, when they were still within earshot of the others. But now the Mighty Nein are far behind him, except for the towering pink and grey firbolg leading the way through the streets of Nicodranas.
> 
> “This isn’t close,” Caleb snips at him.  
Caduceus just smiles at him over his shoulder, “Don’t worry. It’s not as far as it seems.”  
“Where are we going?” He tries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grave clerics get some pretty cool abilities and what better chance to use them than when a mysteriously not-dead former teammate shows up. Also I am HYPE for the next chapter. Molly and Marion never got a chance to meet and that's a shame.

Caleb immediately picks up on the direction Caduceus is leading him once they take one too many turns. At first, he didn’t want to say anything, when they were still within earshot of the others. But now the Mighty Nein are far behind him, except for the towering pink and grey firbolg leading the way through the streets of Nicodranas.

“This isn’t close,” Caleb snips at him.

Caduceus just smiles at him over his shoulder, “Don’t worry. It’s not as far as it seems.”

“Where are we going?” He tries.

He’s right, almost as if to answer his question Caduceus turns to face him. The lighthouse behind him blocks the sunlight and puts him in silhouette. Maybe he’s not trying to be intimidating, maybe he is, Caleb couldn’t tell. The head and torso of a wild-haired woman carved into one side of the lighthouse looks like she’s flanking him.

Instead of answering his question he approaches the heavy wooden door of the lighthouse and knocks, “Lightkeeper Gladys?”

A slot in the wood opens, “Who is it? Oh! Mr. Clay! You’re back. Can I help you?”

Caduceus puts a hand to Caleb’s shoulder and pushes him forward, “I need to meditate, I was hoping that it may be easier to reach out to the Wildmother if I did it here.”

“Who’s your friend?” The set of eyes peering through the slot glare down at him for a second then go back up to Caduceus.

“Caleb, he has some interest in the Wildmother, figured I would let him tag along,” Caduceus smiles amicably.

It doesn’t look like the ‘lightkeeper’ believes him but for whatever reason decides he’s not a threat, “Alright, one second, you can come in.”

The heavy door creaks open and the age-bent human woman leads the two of them up the stairs into the lighthouse proper. However, she doesn’t seem concerned with whatever Caduceus is doing and leaves them to it. Caleb is only further baffled when Caduceus produces a tea kettle and small burlap pouch of tea leaves from his bag and sets to work brewing a pot. It all happens so quickly that the instant Caleb opens his mouth to ask what’s going on, why he separated him from Yasha and the others, who even is the Wildmother anyway, what does he think he’s getting at, there’s already a chipped teacup being shoved into his hands.

Caduceus sits cross-legged on the floor, “I just wanted to see what would happen if I brought you inside a holy place.”

It sounds like it might be an insult but not said with enough malice to register as one, “Okay?”

Caduceus gestures for him to join him on the floor, “I can keep an eye peeled for undead creatures. You were,” he pauses to think of the word, “inconsistent. Sometimes you would pick up as undead, but it would flicker out as soon as I saw it. You probably aren’t undead, just messy. You coming back is a little worrying, but as far as I can tell you aren’t _ actually _undead. Pretty sure you would have burnt up or something stepping in here if you were. Regardless, still concerned that you aren’t still dead. No offense. It’s just, there’s an order to things, dead things stay dead.”

“None taken,” Caleb cocks a brow at him and takes a sip of the fruity tea, “Messy?”

“Messy, as in I don’t know but whatever’s going on with you won’t be easy to parse. I know I said I made the earth remember you, but this seems a bit much,” he jokes with himself at the end.

“Well, I can assure you, and _ Caleb _ can attest to the fact that there’s a pulse under this skin,” he takes a dig at the other Caleb, still undecided on how he feels about the night before.

Caduceus sees the raw nerve there and pushes the conversation elsewhere, “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think I ever actually replaced you. I don’t fill the same niche you did back then. And don’t worry. As it stands you’re probably going to fill a different one now anyway.”

Talk of replacements somehow isn’t much better, and Caleb shifts the subject, “You’re a cleric, did _ you _ bury me?”

“No, you were in the ground already. I’d heard them mention you, drop a few details in passing but I honestly had no clue what you would look like. That’s why I was so confused last night. I knew you were a tiefling, knew you were colorful. That’s about all I knew,” Caduceus sets his tea aside, now focused entirely on him, his searching eyes burning him with his gaze.

Of all the Nein it seems like a neck and neck competition between Yasha and Caduceus for ‘most willing to explain his death to him’ and Yasha isn’t here so, “How were they? After I died.”

“We got drunk as soon as we got back to civilization. I’d never been drunk before,” Caduceus’s nose scrunches up a little like he’s remembering the smell and taste of it.

A lilting grin creeps across his lips, “Did you have fun?”

The idea of people being crushed by sadness due to losing him feels wrong. Even if he can’t remember any of them properly, tears are the last thing he wants. Even if they were drinking away their loss it still could have lead to something celebratory instead. Celebrating the life “Mollymauk” had lived and not mourning the friend they’d lost.

“I mean, it tasted bad. But I don’t feel too strongly about it either way. I’d much rather just drink my tea anyway,” which he punctuates by sipping the last of his cup.

“You’re an interesting fellow, Caduceus,” Caleb leans forward and takes a long hard look at Caduceus, though it’s a weak echo of Caduceus’s own searching stare.

He stands up, wipes off the inside of the cup with his shirt, and sticks it back in his bag, “Come on, I just wanted to test my theory. We should get back to the group. Don’t wanna make them too worried.”

“Oh, okay,” he gets back to his feet and returns the cup.

It feels like they’d barely spent any time in the lighthouse. In his rush, Caduceus doesn’t even call out to let the lightkeeper know they’re leaving. With his large frame and legs that are probably six inches longer than his own Caleb struggles to keep pace with him on their way back to the Lavish Chateau. The thought of having to confront whatever the fuck happened with him and the other Caleb last night makes his skin crawl. Right as Jester and Nott’s voices come into earshot he shoots out a hand to grab Caduceus’s silky spider-web sleeve.

“Wait!” slightly breathless from trying to keep pace with him, “Just so I’m not stumbling blindly into anything else. What happened after Yasha and I left last night?”

Caduceus stops in his tracks and frowns as he considers his answer, but recognizes the second question buried in the subtext and takes the long way around in answering him, “I don’t _ know _ the exact details of whatever your relationship with Caleb was before. I haven’t been able to get much out of him about it. But there was something a little... _ frantic _ about him when we got back to Zadash.”

“I can make a guess,” there’s an edge of wistfulness to it that he hadn’t heard when he said it in his head, and he hopes that Caduceus doesn’t hear it.

“And I think you would be right,” Caduceus nods in agreement.

“But I don’t remember him,” once again his words come out entirely different once they leave his lips, sounding defensive instead of the statement of fact it was in his head.

“You don’t. And it’s entirely up to you if you want to do anything with this. He’s not obligated to anything.”

“Thanks, ‘Duceus,” and with a pat on the arm, they continue the rest of the way to the Lavish Chateau, a little slower now so he isn’t half walking half jogging.

They enter the Chateau without issue, either the man at the door recognizes the party as a whole or can’t quite be bothered at the moment. Regardless they enter into a foyer fitting the description a place called “The Lavish Chateau” would entail. It’s early afternoon and the place is far from busy so spotting the rest of the Nein at one of the tables is hardly a challenge. A few of them are half-heartedly picking at the silver tray of complimentary fruit, cheese, and crackers. He and Yasha share a moment of relieved eye contact when she looks up from the table and sees him come in with Caduceus.

Then he spots Beauregard and the other Caleb, knees deep in what looks like a very heated discussion, possibly argument if he could make out what they were saying. All the words between them come out in hissed whispers. Beauregard glances up and notices him, promptly gesturing to the other Caleb to ‘drop it.’ And the two act like nothing had happened, even though the leftover tension from whatever they’d walked into still buzzes in the air around him.

Jester shoots up from the table and takes Caduceus’s hand in one of her own and his hand in the other and drags them to join them at the table, “C’mon! My mama will be down any second now! I wanted you to meet her so bad before, Caleb! This is great! You’re gonna love her!”

Without warning all the lights dim and Caleb can make out the clack of a heel on the stairs above. He looks over his shoulder and finds himself in awe of the woman looking down at them. The ruby-red tiefling woman at the top of the stairs smiles down at them with the warmest smile he’s seen in this life, focused on Jester. Her dark red, almost black, hair curls expertly around her gold-adorned horns that spiral out from her head in a loose coil, as opposed to the tight spiral of Jester’s little ram’s horns.

“My little sapphire, you’re back, and I see you’ve brought your,” her gaze scans over all of them but halts on him, “friends?”


	5. Doubles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Jester time folks.  
\-------  
Jester suddenly perks up again, remembering something, “Oh! Caleb! You seemed a lot less colorful than the last time we saw you so I might have planned to do something about that.”
> 
> He leans back in his seat, mulling over how earnest she is and he can see something in her posture that he’s having trouble placing, maybe it’s the way she’s keeping her tail curled around her leg, “Oh? And what do you plan to do, Miss Jester?”
> 
> She waggles a brow at him but he notices her tail’s grip on her leg tighten, “It’s a surprise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya know, I had so many ideas and was so excited for Molly to meet Marion and then the moment I was abt to write it every single idea flew out of my head. Updating later than expected bc oh boy life. Ship stuff is gonna start happening in the next chapter.

Caleb is still staring in rapt amazement as she reaches the bottom of the stairs and joins them. The Ruby of the Sea, Jester’s mother is the Ruby of the Sea. He’s heard of her, he lives in Nicodranas he knows about the Ruby of the Sea. There’s a strong sense of admiration in his chest as he watches her speak with Jester. He knows he isn’t listening to what’s being said, despite it being important. They’re probably catching her up on the events of however-long-it’s-been since they last saw her. 

He finally notices someone addressing him by name, “Caleb?”

“What? Yes, that’s me,” he propped his chin up on his fist.

“You’re  _ unfazed _ by this?” Marion asks while inspecting him with her gaze.

“Well, ‘Ducey over there says I’m not undead so I think I’m going to be alright,” he says light and breezy even though the more people tell him he should be fazed the more it starts to dig its claws in.

Marion eases slightly but there’s still concern in her eyes, “Then it’s nice to finally meet you, Caleb.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” though internally he’s wondering how long it would take to put on all of the jewelry on her horns, though she probably has attendants. He can vaguely recognize some of the craftsmanship as a particular jeweler whose window he stares in every so often.

She follows his distracted eyes with her own and spots the specific trinket he’s staring at, a little sapphire charm dangling next to her ear, “This is the oldest one, they get more recent further down.”

Jester chimes in with a grin, and a singsong voice, “Because I’m her little sapphire.”

She pinches Jester’s cheek and a soft laugh escapes her lips, “Do you still have-?”

“Of course! I just keep it in my bag because I don’t want it to get messed up or lose it,” Jester plops the pink haversack down onto the table and starts rummaging through it before pulling her arm back out and holding out a matching ruby charm in her palm, “See?”

Jester suddenly perks up again, remembering something, “Oh! Caleb! You seemed a lot less colorful than the last time we saw you so I  _ might _ have planned to do something about that.”

He leans back in his seat, mulling over how  _ earnest  _ she is and he can see something in her posture that he’s having trouble placing, maybe it’s the way she’s keeping her tail curled around her leg, “Oh? And what do you plan to do, Miss Jester?”

She waggles a brow at him but he notices her tail’s grip on her leg tighten, “It’s a surprise.”

“I’ve had an interesting day, you’re going to have to try very hard to surprise me,” and he’s certainly not expecting it when she dashes away from the table.

She calls over her shoulder, “Come on!”

“Where?” He shouts back.

“My room, come on!” She already sounds like she’s halfway up the stairs.

“I think you’ll like it,” Yasha smiles, she must know what Jester’s up to, probably agreed to keep it a surprise.

“Hate to cut and run,” he apologizes quickly to Marion before breaking into a run to catch back up with Jester.

When he reaches the top of the stairs he spots her poking her head around the corner. But then a copy of her hand taps him on the shoulder. Which one? He snaps his head back and forth between the Jesters, taking a minute to decide which is the real one. But the one in the doorway just laughs at him and runs into the room behind her.

Caleb follows close behind into the room and is struck by how spacious it is, with the four-poster bed on a raised platform. As beautiful as everything is in here, with the delicate curtains and plush sheets, he’s struck by how much it seems like a child’s room. Jester is already eagerly rummaging through a tall wardrobe, looking for something.

“So you said I’m not colorful enough?” Caleb shuts the door behind him.

“No! It’s not that you aren’t colorful  _ enough _ . It’s just that I remember how colorful you were and it’s not that you aren’t colorful  _ now _ , your vest is very cute by the way, but I figured you probably didn’t have much on you when you woke up sooooooo,” she finally fishes out a package wrapped in brown paper and tied in twine and throws it on the bed, “I got you some new clothes while you and Caduceus were gone! I hope that’s okay. I didn’t know your measurements but I made some guesses. Also, do you still have your coat? I haven’t seen you wear it but I figured maybe it was just too warm for you to wear here.”

“...coat?”

She gasps loudly enough to make him flinch, “Hold on!”

She drops her haversack on the floor and digs through it, pulling out sketchbook after sketchbook. When she seems to have found all of them she sets to frantically flipping through the pages, looking for something. He can only catch glimpses of her art but he notices how skilled she is with a pen. There are doodles of the others in candid moments. His eyes lock on a particularly amusing cartoon doodle of Beauregard nodding off at a tavern table. And so many flowers, flipping through one of them he watches over her shoulder and the entire middle third is studies of flowers.

“AHA! There!” Jester pushes the sketchbook into his arms.

Oh, it’s an elaborate ink sketch of a four-pronged coat with a hood and checkered collar, lined with a teal fabric with moons patterned on it, striped slit sleeves make the whole thing a little more like a vest than a coat. The entire thing is covered in a dizzying amount of embroidery. All of it religious symbols, but he intuits that he probably didn’t believe in or follow any of them. “Damn, that’s a cool coat.”

“We’ll get you an even  _ cooler _ coat. With even more patterns!!” She flips through the most recent sketchbook looking for enough blank space to start patterning a coat. “Wait! That’s right, you need to try on those clothes.”

“Right! The clothes!” He’s trying not to let it show but admittedly he hasn’t exactly had the funds to dress as gaudy as he’s wanted. Sure, he could sell some of the jewelry on his horns but selling those were for more desperate occasions.

She plucks off the twine and tears open the paper, scattering the clothes out on the bed, “Which one?”

He picks up a collared peacock-blue sleeveless shirt, held closed with buckles at the waist, and a long asymmetrical tail fanning out from the bottom, “This one?”

“Oooo!  _ Yesssss _ ! I wasn’t so sure about that one because I know you love patterns but I figured the tail thingy was right up your alley,” she starts rummaging through the pile for some pants that would match it. “Oh! Do you want me to do your makeup? I could do your makeup if you wanted!”

He shrugs out of his vest and shirt and starts putting it on, “That sounds lovely.”

And he stays mostly quiet as she pulls out some simple makeup from a desk drawer and sits him down on a stool. Caleb shifts and pulls his hair back real quick before she gets started. He relaxes the muscles in his face and neck to help her as she rings his eyes in black and the rogue  _ mostly  _ works with his skin tone.

“And you  _ knoooow _ ,” she starts, as she debates which lipstick to use, “I  _ might _ have learned how to do tattoos. Orly taught me while we were at sea. And he taught me how to do these fancy magic tattoos.”

He raised a brow at her, “Are you offering?”

“Duh, besides, you told us that the tattoos are to hide all the eyes and you have another one now so if you want to hide it with another tattoo I can do that for you. Didn’t Caleb ask you about that last night?” She finally decides on a deep shade of plum.

He doesn’t answer right away, “Why are you doing this?”

“I missed you...I guess, I still miss you now. Since you don’t remember. But I’m sure,” she takes a long sigh, fixing his lipstick with a fingernail, “We can fix this.”

_ I don’t know if this can be fixed. _ “You can certainly try.”

“Like you could stop me,” she smirked.

A twinge of guilt hits him, “I’m sorry about this morning. I didn’t mean to be so snappy with you. A lot has changed very quickly. I mean,” he takes a deep breath through his nose, “how’re you?”

Her tail tightens around her leg again, “I, you, I was really excited because I thought you were back. I missed you so much! And I couldn’t even do anything in the first place! And I just missed having you around. I missed talking in Infernal. None of the others know Infernal and we only talk to my mama so often. It was nice just...talking. But you’re. No, you aren’t gone. I can tell you’re still you. You just don’t remember. And afterward, last night, I was trying so hard to not let it show because everyone else was already so confused and sad and upset and I didn’t want to make things worse so I just kept it to myself! And-!”

He shoots up from the stool and hugs her tight. Once he feels his shirt warm a little with what he assumes might be her crying he takes a deep breath to focus on not crying and ruin the makeup she’d just done for him.

“ _ I’m sorry _ ,” he mumbles into her hair in Infernal.

She grumbles into his chest, replying back in Infernal, “ _ For what? Getting killed? You couldn’t stop that. _ ”

He holds her a little tighter, “ _ For everything. _ ”

Jester pulls away and goes back to her sketchbook, sitting down on the bed, “Come on, this is too sad. Let’s work on your tattoo.”

He side hugs her but doesn’t push her any harder, “‘Course, can I ask though?”

“About?” She halts flipping through the most recent sketchbook.

“Why do you have so many flowers in that one?” He points to one of the filled sketchbooks on the floor.

Blush rises across her cheeks and she tries to hide it in pouring all of her attention into the sketch she’s working on, “They were for Yasha. I was going to give them to her when she came back. But I was too nervous to actually do it.”

“Well,” he leans in with a devilish grin, “No time like the present, wouldn’t you say?”

“ ** _CAYLEEB_ ** ! I can’t just give them to her  _ now _ !” 

“Why not?”

“I-,” she starts to think of an excuse, doubles back, “we’re  _ supposed _ to be working on your tattoo! What do you want? Do you want like, a pattern? Or do you want a drawing? If I’m remembering right you don’t have any tattoos on your chest so we have plenty of room to work with.”

“Hmm, maybe a heart? Or a lotus? What do you think?” He ponders it.

“Ooo! If we do a heart! There're these sailor tattoos! Where it’s like, a heart with a knife in it! I have lots of practice with that one!” Jester sets to sketching out a heart that takes up an entire page.

“A little on the nose, I like it,” he chuckles and curls up on his side, watching her work on the design.


	6. Dancing Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Use dancing lights to make your mysteriously resurrected amnesiac ex-bf look even prettier when you waltz.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! No chapter last week bc I had two exams and a lab report but here we are! See also, the chapter where things earnestly start to get ship-y. I just wanted to mention that this is solely meant to be a fun 'what if' au thing, not a serious 'bring Molly back' fic.

After maybe a half-hour of lounging on Jester’s bed watching her sketch a million different stabbed-through heart designs they finally get up to rejoin the others. While her back is turned he deftly scoops up the flowers-for-Yasha sketchbook from its place on the floor without her noticing. The clack of his boot heels down the stairs seems too loud, pulling (for once) unwanted attention towards him.

Caduceus shoots him a wide smile and a wave, looking up from his previous conversation with Yasha, “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Hello to you too, Big Guy,” he shoots back, casually sitting side-saddle in one of the empty seats Fjord and Beauregard vacated in favor of the bar.

“Did you do his makeup?” Nott asks from behind her flask.

Jester fusses with the lipstick again, dragging the edge of one of her nails along his bottom lip, “It’s pretty good, right?”

“The blush looks a little weird but I think that’s more a problem with the color than anything you did,” Nott takes a sip, visibly tense through the shoulders.

The other Caleb is completely silent next to Nott. His coppery hair is just long enough to hang where it can shield his face when he stares down wordlessly at the table. Without competition, he appears, even more, wound up than his friend at his side. He even has the collar of his coat popped to shield him even more. Why does he care? It doesn’t matter to him that the other Caleb is uncomfortable around him now. 

“Can I see your hand?” Marion asks.

He looks up and down at his inked hand and her, “The tattoos? Of course, darling.”

She takes his hand when he offers it. She turns it over a few times to get a full look at the length of the snake up his arm, “Why a snake?”

“Dunno,” he shrugs and pulls his arm back in a single, smooth motion, “Woke up with it. Woke up with all of them. Heard something about them hiding eyes? Dunno.”

“Well, the skill behind it is clear. If you could remember, I would ask you who did it. I have a client looking for a new artist. I would have passed the name along.”

“No worries. Good to know that Mollymauk had good taste,” looking out over his shoulder at the corner of his eye.

The past tense is the epitome of intentional. 

They all stew in silence until the other Caleb stirs. He still doesn’t manage to bring his gaze up from the wood grain of the table.

He clears his throat, “Mo-,” he halts, corrects himself with an expression that makes it look like he’s attempting to eat something long gone rotten and sour, “Caleb, I just, I wanted to apologize. For last night. I was out of line.”

“You were,” he says flatly.

“I would like to make it up to you if you would give me the chance,” his fingers nervously tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck.

“And how do you plan to do that?”

“I do not know yet.”

“You better figure it out then.”

The stifling silence lays over them for a painfully long minute before the light sounds of instruments being tuned one last time before the performance begins hits them. A timed enchantment kicks in and all of the lighting dims and washes over all of them in a warm glow in time with the band starting in earnest. The other Caleb rises from his seat across the table, face no longer hidden, the collar on his coat relaxes just enough to follow suit. He must be imagining things. He’s not  _ clean  _ per se but he looks different somehow. Now that he’s worked up enough nerve to do whatever it is that’s on his mind ( _ his brilliant mind _ , a voice identical to his own but supplying words not his own chimes in). 

He leans forward across the table just a smidge, a hand outstretched to him, “May I have this dance?” His jaw clenches at a word he must want to punctuate it with but he stops himself.

“That depends,” Caleb leans further back in his chair, one knee bent over the other, “I want to know more about this ‘Mollymauk.’”

Nott lets slip something hushed under her breath about how this reads as familiar.

Caleb’s gaze never falters, “Beau and I buried you. I left you a note, in your shirt, in case you woke up, though I suppose it ended up not being as helpful as I had hoped.”

Without another question, he takes the hand, peppered with writing calluses, and lets him lead over to the empty space of the dance floor. He puts a careful hand on one hip, taking his hand in the other and leads the dance. It takes a moment to recognize it, but he’s familiar with the pattern. Their dance certainly doesn’t keep in time with the band but the rhythm is hypnotic. 

“You waltz?” Caleb asks with a teasing lilt to his voice.

“Between you and me, it’s the only dance I ever learned,” though he seems painfully out-of-practice judging by how intently he’s paying attention to his feet.

“Oh? Are you looking to learn?” Caleb leans in to whisper the joke into his ear.

The other Caleb’s eyes widen in surprise for a moment, the ghost of a blush rising on his cheeks before he shakes himself of whatever thought or memory hit him.

Caleb shifts the conversation, not exactly eager to waltz in silence with someone who isn’t looking him in the eye, “You called me something last night.”

“I called you many things, I fear you will have to be more specific.”

“The last thing, sounded like a pet name.”

The other Caleb searches for an answer but doesn’t speak. Okay, so it’s what he thought. The exact meaning isn’t too important though. This is going to be frustrating if this man only knows how to answer his questions with prolonged silence. He lets the hand on the other Caleb’s shoulder tangle in the hair that rests on the nape of his neck. Damn, he feels warm to the touch, not in an overheated way. His skin is just naturally warm. Without paying it any mind he leans in a little so that they’re pressed together chest to chest. The hand on his hip lifts for a second and he can feel the vibrations in the other man’s chest as he spouts off a few words in some variation of Common under his breath before returning. Globules of colorful light spinning around their heads call for his attention. They float and flit around his head just so, the jewelry in his horns catching the light. A slight upturn at the corners of his mouth is the only indication that the other Caleb is taking in the quiet wonder on his face at the sight of the will-o-the-wisp-ish lights he’s conjured for him.

Caleb steels himself, tearing through him with a relentless ruby red stare, “I hope you don’t expect anything of me.”

His gaze falters but he manages to maintain eye contact, “I do not. But I would hope that you would give me a chance.”

Caleb doesn’t know any proper dances, not a single one. But he’s been following along with the waltz long enough that he thinks he can do this. In an instant he switches the positions of their hands and takes the lead, changing directions so quick the tail of his shirt whips around them, the air surrounding them fills with the tinkling of fine metal chains on the charms on his horns. The dancing lights around them struggle to keep up with the change of pace, lagging behind as they dance further and further away from the table.

“Caleb,” his eyes burn into the other Caleb’s.

“Yes, Mo-, Caleb?” He stumbles on his own tongue.

“What did the note say?” He asks in a harsh whisper, the note of intimidation is there but it burns to get to the information he’s hungry for. All these months of nothing and while he thought he’d been content with not knowing, just living blissfully unaware of life before. Now that he has access to information he’s starting to want it more and more. He can coax it out of the others, but the other Caleb keeps answering with silences. 

The other Caleb’s hands clench and relax, looking at him again, most of the dirt from last night has been washed off his face and hair, “Just that you should find us through The Gentleman. And your name. A few more relevant details.”

“And what details exactly are relevant?”

He ducks his head, tucking his chin into his chest, “That I am sorry, that we are all sorry. And that-. It is no matter, not anymore. It would not make sense to you now. You do not remember.”

Caleb tilts his head so he can whisper in his ear without knocking him upside the head with his horns, “ _ Then remind me _ .”


	7. Unfinished Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mollymauk decides to wrap up unfinished business

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mollymauk "I think I will cause problems on purpose" Tealeaf is a menace. Sorry if Fjord comes across as too mean. I wasn't trying to make him seem mean. I just think he would be the most doubtful of a Mysterious Molly Ressurection.
> 
> Feedback in the comments is always appreciated! Feel free to check out my other fics while you're here.

The other Caleb panics, mouth opening and closing as he flounders for words but none come to him. 

“And how would you like me to do that?” He finally remembers how to speak.

“Well, you supposedly know me, Mr. Widogast. What would remind me?” Caleb notices the rasp of the other man’s stubble on his face and has to hold back the impulse to lean into it, they’re already pressed so close together.

He speaks low, “Do you  _ want _ to be reminded?”

Caleb slows their pace, “I thought I was making myself very clear.”

“That is not a yes or a no, Liebling,” he lets the last word slip.

In a move he doesn’t see coming, the other Caleb slips out of his arms and returns to the table. Cool air washes over his front once he’s standing there, alone in the middle of the dance floor. No, the Lavish Chateau is pleasantly cool in contrast with the warm and humid air in Nicodranas. By all means, his empty arms should not be this cold. But he collects himself and with a flourishing step that makes the tail of his shirt whip around him he follows suit and rejoins them at the table, taking his place sandwiched between Yasha and Caduceus. 

When the night ends, Caleb is quick to head back to the Withering Bird, keeping a few paces ahead of the Mighty Nein. In one arm he has a paper-wrapped package of clothes and a page of tattoo sketches from Jester. 

When they finally make it inside Jester curls an arm around one of his own, “We’re just upstairs! You can hang out with us tonight if you want!”

“I’m beat, see you lovely folks in the morning,” he tosses a wink over his shoulder back at them as he heads to his room.

It’s a lie. He can’t sleep. He can lie there in the blanket nest all he wants. He can try changing into some soft leggings and a loose undershirt and washing the makeup off and make himself close his eyes. But sleep won’t come. It won’t come no matter how much he wills it. The other Caleb never fucking reminded him. All that preamble of a godsdamn waltz and he hadn’t told him any of the juicy details of the note that he’d woken up with. He sits up in the nest and reaches out to grab his bag off the floor and dumps it out onto the bed, rummaging through the spilled contents in the darkness.

The note crinkles loudly in his hand when he grabs it in a clenched fist. Its smudged, illegible ink mocks him. He  _ could  _ have known, he  _ could _ have gotten straight back to what he needed to do instead of aimlessly wandering out of the Empire and into the Menagerie Coast. Fucking  _ months _ . Months of nothing hadn’t bothered him. How had he been so content with nothing for so long? It’s only taken what? A little more than a day? And he’s already  _ itching  _ with the need for answers. But he doesn’t want to trudge through the other questions they’ll ask him that only stand in the way of his own search for answers by going to them directly. The last thing he wants is to be bombarded with questions he couldn’t answer even if he wanted to.

It takes a second for him to work all of the jewelry out of his horns and toss it into his bag. Now with all the tinkling charms off of his head, he slides open the window and crawls outside. He clambers up into the tree and listens for the Mighty Nein’s voices. Any of them, who he hears first doesn’t really matter. He climbs higher up and down one of the sturdier branches to find their rooms.

He finally hears one of their voices.

“What if it’s not actually him?” The rough-and-tumble accent comes from Fjord, his voice guarded and tense, if he could see him he’d probably look ready to pounce.

The other Caleb shoots back instantly, “ _ IT  _ ** _IS _ ** _ HIM DUMMKOPF!!”  _

Beauregard’s gravelly voice is almost contemplative, “He didn’t remember us, at all.”

“ _ Because it’s not him! It can’t be! You buried him! He was someone else before he was Mollymauk and now he’s someone else! _ ” Fjord shoots back.

Nott sounds like she’s responding to Beauregard instead of the heated argument the other two are in, “He doesn’t remember us at all. What are the chances that he could even get his memory back?”

He can hear the other Caleb mutter, just barely, “ _ he remembers _ .”

“He’s not going to get his memory back because it’s not him!” Fjord’s exasperation is wearing on his voice.

In his head, he can imagine Caleb whipping around to Fjord, his voice as fiery as his hair, “Why are you so deadset that it cannot be him?! Why cannot you just believe that for once fortune is smiling at us, Fjord!”

Beauregard’s tone shifts into something more assertive, “I mean, he has to remember  _ something _ , he took your name, what’re the chances of that being a coincidence?” 

Fjord is still guarded, but not tense, tiredness creeping through, “...It can’t be him.” 

Beauregard picks up the tension from Fjord’s voice and adds it to her own, “Okay, seriously Fjord, why not? Why can’t it be Molly? Yasha can tell he’s Molly and if any of us could tell it would be her!” 

Fuck it, fuck all of this. He doesn’t want arguments of who he  _ really  _ is. What’s the point of arguing when you can just find out? But he can’t convince himself to climb back down and slip into his blankets. And if he’s too loud coming down they might spot him and that’s an entirely different problem he doesn’t want to have right now. So he stays there between the tree branch and exterior wall of the Withered Bird, fists clenched. He waits for the conversation to die down but he stays there in his hiding spot the whole time, his nails digging into his palms, close to drawing blood, the blood that he can feel starting to want to escape him. 

The Gentleman, things keep on pointing him back to the Gentleman, back to Zadash. There was a woman there who knows the first person he’d been, she probably doesn’t know Mollymauk but at least she might know how this happened. And  _ why the fuck  _ does this creep have his blood? Does he still have it or did he toss it when the news came to him that he’d died? There are too many loose ends there.

After what feels like for fucking ever the ‘Is Mollymauk real?’ debate comes to a close and he can hear at least one person leaving the room with an angry door slam. In time with the slam, he shimmies back down to his window and climbs in. There’s a second of pause where he wonders if he should change back into his clothes from earlier instead of just barging up there in his night-clothes but he shakes off the thought and rushes up to the second floor.

He pounds on the door he knows Caleb is behind, “WIDOGAST!  _ OPEN UP! _ ”

“What?” He startles when he opens the door and narrowly avoids getting punched by Caleb’s knocking.

He takes a fistful of his collar in one hand and starts back downstairs, “With me. Now.”

“What’s going on?”

“We’re gonna talk, Widogast,” he brings them both back down the stairs so quickly they’re almost immediately back into his room now.

“Mo-, Caleb what are you doing?” His eyes dart around the cluttered walls as Caleb shuts the door behind them.

He takes a step forward into Caleb’s space, “I’m  ** _real_ ** .”

“Were you? Were you listening to us?”

He encroaches further into Caleb’s space, “That’s not important. Now tell me how you lot got to Nicodranas? Walk? Cart? Horseback?” 

“A cart, with, with horses, what? What are you going on about? What are you doing?”

“Ghosts have unfinished business, don’t they? I need to see the Gentleman.”

Concern floods stormy eyes, “Do you really want to do that? The Gentleman thinks you’re dead, we don’t know  _ what  _ exactly he’s doing but he’s shady. You’re running straight back into the lion’s den.”

Caleb can feel a tremor begin in his hands, he’s still wrapping his head around everything, “He has people who know and I want to remember. Besides, the fucker has my blood and I don’t want to know what he does with it.”

His eyes refuse to leave the other Caleb’s. That eye contact is anchoring him in whatever bullshit is flaring in his mind right now. There’s a voice in his head, that voice that sounds like him but doesn’t say things  _ he _ would say. Just a ceaseless chanting of  _ don’t leave, don’t leave, for the love of all that is holy don’t leave, you finally have him back, don’t leave! _ It takes a gargantuan level of control to tear his eyes off of the other Caleb’s. The voice in his head is telling him not to leave, to never leave again, please never leave.

Widogast carefully takes one of his hands in his own, it’s warm through the glove and bandages. He squeezes back. His hand wraps naturally around his own. It’s, it’s nicer than he’d like to admit.

He keeps his gaze planted on his feet, dashing through his words, “I’ll be back as quickly possible. There, a day or two to deal with my shit, and back. After all, I have unfinished business here too now. I’d hate to have wasted Jester’s time drawing all those tattoos.”

“ _ Are you okay? _ ” Widogast runs his thumb across the backs of his knuckles in a comforting gesture.

Molly grabs his hand tighter, holds their clenched hands together up at his mouth, eyes screwed shut because he can feel Caleb staring at him. It’s not meant to be pity but it feels like it.

Caleb takes his free hand and fixes Molly’s hair back, tucking it behind his horns, “If you need to go, then...you should go. Do you want anyone to come with-?”

“No, I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”

“...I already know you’re gone.”

Caleb packs his belongings into his bag and throws on some sturdier clothes for riding. Once he’s ready, the other Caleb takes him outside to where the cart and horses are. He rummages around looking for the tack and fits it onto one of the horses before unhitching it and handing the reins over to him.

He mounts the horse and nods down at him, “Caleb.”

He nods back, “Caleb.”

With a snap of his wrists, he sets off for Zadash. The not-his voice tells him to look back but he keeps pace leaving Nicodranas.


	8. The Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly-as-Caleb returns to Zadash and finds who he's looking for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't actually know how long the ride from Nicodranas to Zadash is tbh.
> 
> Comments are always appreciated! And feel free to check out my other stuff while you're here!

Once he reaches the edge of Nicodranas and out onto the road, there's a gut-dropping moment of 'oh no' where he realizes that he doesn't know where Zadash is, much less how to get there. He never even stopped there on his way to Nicodranas. But he’s stubborn and one to commit to his mistakes so he keeps riding until the path ahead is too uncertain for him to take that risk.

Right as he’s packing up the meager camp he’s made by the roadside, stained gold by the early twinges of dawn light that colors sky he can feel magic scraping against his skull, like a spectral hand brushing his hair away to whisper in his ear. The voice that rings out inside his head speaks quickly in a panic.

Jester’s panicked voice invading his mind makes a twinge of guilt twist his stomach, “CALEB! CALEB! Where are you! We woke up and you were gone! Are you okay?! What happened?! You can reply to this message!”

The guilty feeling practically tears his gut out of his of him when he stubbornly keeps his mouth shut waiting for the spell’s energy to fizzle away.

“ _ Mollymauk Tealeaf! We need to know you’re alive! Answer my message! _ ” Jester’s voice grips him again with hardly any time between the first spell ending and the new one beginning.

“Alive, unfinished business.”

This time the magic fades and stays gone. With no further interruptions to his morning, he mounts the other Caleb’s horse and sets a breakneck pace towards where he hopes Zadash is. He knows he probably turns heads, a colorful, galloping blur down the road like the fiends of all the Hells are hot on his heels.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Caleb is nothing if not a creature of impulse. Which is how he explains it to himself when he starts his mad search through the streets of Zadash, not caring whose attention he attracts. He’s looking for someone and sometimes the quickest way to find is to be found. 

He slips down off the horse, the reins in hand, and approaches someone he hopes is a local, “‘Scuse me!”

“Hm?” the startled half-elf pauses, still taking a bite of an apple.

Caleb postures a little, “I’m looking for an old business partner of mine. I’m afraid our last deal ended unexpectedly and I need to see him.”

“Who’re you looking for?” 

He gives his best, most charming smile, “The Gentleman. I really do need to talk with him. If that’s not too much trouble, sweetheart.”

The half-elf blanches at his answer, “I’m afraid I have to be somewhere. Good luck with that though.”

He darts out a hand to try and catch them as they run away but dodges his hand effortlessly and is out of sight somewhere in the crowd before he can do anything. Fucking hells. How many rounds of this is he going to have to go through before he can finally find this bastard? With a huff, he marches down the street to continue his search.

The strangest thing is that he gets a few glances of fleeting recognition, looks of half-remembering his face but not his name. Maybe one of them can do him a favor and know where the fuck the Gentleman is. At this rate, the crown guard are going to take him in for suspicious activities long before he finds the Gentleman (or the other way round). And the midday sun is wearing his patience thin. Sweat is making his hair stick uncomfortably to the back of his neck. Simple but sturdy clothes well-suited to riding don’t fare quite as well for the heat. At least Zadash isn’t as humid as Nicodranas.

“Look,” he says with an exasperated sigh, dragging his hand down his face, “I just need to know where to find him! Just tell me where he is and I’ll be out of your hair.”

The butcher continues preparing cuts of the meat he’s working on, “I don’t want any trouble.”

“I’m not  _ aiming  _ for trouble I just need to talk to him! Do you know where I can find him or not?” He tries insisting.

The butcher slams the blade of his cleaver down into the wooden counter, “ _ Get out _ .”

He spits a few curses in Infernal over his shoulder.

Oh, apparently that was the just wrong kind of attention because he walks face-first into a crown’s guard, a slightly beefier fellow guard standing over his shoulder, neither of whom look all that amused with him. 

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. How can I be of help to you?” he bows a little and tries to make it less obvious that he’s readying himself to leap onto the horse the moment things go further south than he can handle at the present.

The one talking to him grabs a fistful of his collar with enough force to pull him off the ground, his toes just barely brushing the dirt beneath him. And it certainly doesn’t help that the silent one is taking the reins from him. The one lifting him speaks past him at the butcher, “Is he giving you trouble, sir?” 

Curiously, the butcher seems to freeze at the crown guard’s words, “Just a nuisance, no need to bother yourselves with it. Thank you for your concern though.” 

It seems that he’s been found.

The guard clamps down manacles to his wrists and starts to tug him along behind, “You’re coming with us.”

“Easy!” He shouts at the guard’s back when the tug jerks his shoulders painfully forward.

The until-now silent guard leans over to talk to the one dragging him, “So what should I do with the horse?”

“It’s not mine! I’m borrowing it!” He cuts in. Though maybe starting with ‘it’s not mine’ wasn’t the best way of explaining himself.

The beefy one holding the reins sneers at him, “Just borrowin’ it, you say?”

“Yes! I  _ do  _ say! I’m borrowing it and I’d rather not come back by foot and short of someone else’s horse!”

The one with the manacles smacks him upside the head, his hand catching against one of his horns as he does so, “ _ Quiet _ .”

He’s not one to stay quiet, especially when told. But he isn’t that much of an idiot. He stews in angered silence as the two guards guide him through the streets of Zadash, the lot of them turning heads as they go. And it seems maybe, he’s been found as they get ever closer to an inn with a sign that reads ‘The Evening Nip.’

Without warning he’s blindfolded and gagged when they turn to enter the side street next to the inn. He can feel them guiding him up a step or two and inside. His foot reaches out blindly for the step when he hears a door open and is yanked forward. Light sounds of revelry, drinking and the rolling of dice and the shuffle of cards, hit his ears. Though the low rumble of hushed conversation ceases when the ‘guards’ bring him in. Now exactly where they want him the blindfold is removed and he blinks a few times to adjust to the light. The beefy guard leaves his friend to go look for someone, with any luck the Gentleman.

Before the guard can come back though, a rush of black fur is running towards him at top speed. The tabaxi woman crashes into him with a hug and holds his face in her hands.

Ignoring the guard’s protests she takes the gag out of his mouth, “ _ They told me you were dead! I swear on all the gods if they lied! You’re back again! How? How are you back? _ ”

There’s some sense of relief that she doesn’t invoke Lucien, “I’m afraid introductions are in order, first.”

Her face falls, “It’s me, Cree!”

“Nice to meet you, Cree. I’m Caleb, kind of need to talk to the Gentleman. Can you point me in his direction?” She knows, knows about his past. But not the past he wants to know anything about. 

Her voice is pained, heartbroken enough to reach through to his core and elicit an involuntary smidgen of sympathy, “Lucien.”

Which promptly fades away when hearing the name makes his knees give out underneath him.

His blood pounds against his skin. And there’s a throbbing in his head, behind his eyes. He can’t help but grumble out curses in Infernal that just the invocation of that name can do this to him. Maybe he can train himself out of that response. A bit too late to be considering that though. He finally notices how labored his breathing sounds as he slowly comes back into himself.

Cree carefully puts a hand to his shoulder, “Are you okay?”

He forces himself to stand, “ _ I’m Caleb _ .”

“You know me! You knew who I was last time! What happened to you?”

“ _ Surprise! _ ” He says with a sing-song to his voice, “I didn’t know you then either! And be-fucking-lieve me I would just  _ love _ to know how the fuck I’m back.”

“Why are you here, then?” she pulls pack from him, guarded.

“I’m out for blood, darling,” he smirks.

She puts a hand to her belt to defensively grab a dagger before she realizes what he means, “Blood, huh? Are you sure about that, Caleb?”

The shaking in his legs doesn’t ease at all but he stays upright out of sheer stubbornness, “Entirely.”

The timing is horrendous but he’s duly surprised when he hears Caduceus’s low rumble instead of Jester’s voice, “Caleb, we finally got Caleb to tell us what you left for. I get it but that’s a bad idea. Are you safe? Please reply.”

He has to think about his next words through carefully so he can pass it off as a suitable reply to Cree while covertly answering to Caduceus, he doesn’t really know the spell but it only seems able to handle short responses, “If you don’t mind, I’d really like my blood back. And if you could tell me anything helpful it’d be greatly appreciated.”

The fuzz of magic skating across his scalp fades and the room falls into true silence. He follows the turning heads to fix his gaze on the newcomer entering the main bar room. A rogue-ish looking man in an expensive blue coat with pitch-black hair and a goatee, light teal skin catches the light in a way that makes him look wet stands there, soaking in the gazes fixed at him as if he were holding them all by a leash. He shifts his focus across the room to where Cree and Caleb are.

The heels of his boots clicking against the floorboards as he approaches, “Might I say, not many have been blessed with as much luck as you, what was it you were calling yourself just now? Caleb? You have an ungodly amount of luck, let’s hope you can maintain it.” 


	9. negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some bargaining with the Gentleman and a reunion after a brief but unexpectedly painful separation  
\--------  
For all the dramatism of his entrance, the Gentleman seems to have no plans to actually deal with him in a timely manner. No, instead he’s promptly brushed off and dragged into a mostly empty room, only containing two chairs. Okay, so maybe they plan on interrogating him here? Not that they’d get anything good from him. No one even attempts to humor him when he asks what exactly they plan on doing with him. All they do is shove him inside and lock the door behind him, with no windows in the door or walls it throws him into pitch blackness. Not even bothering to remove the manacles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand we're back! Thank you so much to the kind folks who commented on the update chapter. I have a much better sense of where the story is going now and with any luck, we should get an appearance from Hot Boi soon.
> 
> The final scene is based on this art by millimauk on twitter/tumblr, the comic can be found here [ x.](https://twitter.com/_milliiii/status/1144720306176757762)

For all the dramatism of his entrance, the Gentleman seems to have no plans to actually deal with him in a timely manner. No, instead he’s promptly brushed off and dragged into a mostly empty room, only containing two chairs. Okay, so maybe they plan on interrogating him here? Not that they’d get anything good from him. No one even attempts to humor him when he asks what exactly they plan on doing with him. All they do is shove him inside and lock the door behind him, with no windows in the door or walls it throws him into pitch blackness. Not even bothering to remove the manacles.

He tries pounding on the door to get  _ anyone’s  _ attention but he’s squarely ignored no matter how much of a fuss he puts up. After, well, he’s not sure how long he’s at it, he decides to save his breath and flops dramatically into one of the two chairs, feet propped up on the seat of the other. Static dances across his scalp and it makes his ears park up in anticipation.

Caduceus’s voice reaches out soundless in his own head, “Caleb? Are you okay? Where specifically are you? You sounded strange earlier, can you talk freely? We’re coming just tell us where you are.”

He sighs and kicks the chair in front of him, “‘M fine. Some ‘gentleman’ this fuck is. Fucking… what’s this place? Leaky Nip? I don’t know, they threw me in a room.” 

There’s no response in turn but he can’t blame the guy for conserving spells. If he needs more information one of them will cast it on him again. Restless again, he gets back up and pounds on the door, straining his ears to listen for anyone approaching the door. Useless. He can barely make out the simple ambient noises of other people just existing in close proximity. And the longer he’s stuck in there the more he has to focus on the light shuffle of boots on stone, clothes shifting as people move. If he can just focus on that the darkness will be less consuming. The suffocating darkness will feel less like those first few seconds of his memory.

Once his hands get too sore he gives up on that and resorts to flopping around the room, pacing the perimeter while dragging his hand along the wall, lying down propped up by the two chairs. If he squints he has enough light to draw patterns in the dust and dirt with his talons. He’s not an exceedingly patient person, but it still feels like he’s been trapped in here for hours.

There’s finally a clinking of metal and the dirge of the door on its hinges as it opens. He’s not allowed enough time to speak before a thug grabs him by the chain of the manacles and drags him out and up a back stairwell. The room he’s eventually brought to is a windowless circular chamber, the wooden floors finely polished and the oil lamps along the wall cast a warm glow. There are curtain partitions along the edge. Only one of these smaller chambers seems to be occupied, finely polished if worn leather boots just visible underneath the curtain. The thug pulls aside the curtain and there’s the Gentleman, reclining comfortably on one side of the table in the private booth. Even in this light, he looks wet, and there’s no light that wouldn’t make him look smug. He’s shoved into the private booth, across the table from the Gentleman, still manacled.

He leans back to match his posture, “You didn’t do anything about my legs.”

“Would you like me to?”

“No, this way I can still kick you right between the legs if you decide to be a bastard,” he leans back even more, unintentionally looking more like a petulant child than suave and intimidating.

The Gentleman just chuckles, “It’s good to see you again, I can always do with a splash of color.”

He scowls at the non-reaction, “I assume you know why I’m here?”

“Mm,” he purses his lips in thought, “some fuss about your blood. Not sure what you want with a vial of your own blood, it’s not like you’re using it.”

“And am I supposed to believe  _ you’re  _ using it in my best interests?” 

“Oh I don’t need your trust,” he pulls a small flask from somewhere near his hip and casually takes a drink.

That gives him pause, “So what do you need? No point in locking me in your fucking cupboard if you don’t plan on doing something with me.”

“That depends entirely on what you’re capable of Mr. Caleb,” he offers the flask but he declines with a gesture, unsure of its contents.

The Gentleman gives him a long, considering look that does nothing for the nerves he’s trying to ignore.

He corrects his posture just enough to edge back towards ‘roguish’, “Here’s an easy question.”

“Oh?”

He rests his arms on the table, the chain clanking against the wood, “Why do I still need that luck?”

The line of his shoulders goes rigid, “You want your blood back.”

“Yes, that feels pretty well established at this point, dear,” annoyance is allowed unfettered into his voice.

“You died in my service so technically you aren’t in my employ anymore-.”

“I hope you don’t make a habit of putting corpses on the payroll.”

The glare he gets for his interruption is enough to make him shut up. And so the Gentleman continues, “I’m willing to give you your blood back, consider it compensation if you’d like. However, this isn’t something you’re just going to walk out of here with. I just need you to do one more job for me and then you’re free to do whatever you want with a few measly ounces of your own blood. Not sure what all the fuss is about but if that’s what you want so badly, you can have it,” he mumbles something under his breath that sounds like, “ _ not that the rest of you seem bothered by this _ .”

He doesn’t respond to the whispered comment but does his best to file it away for later, “Alright then.”

He almost buries his talons in the table when the Gentleman seems to change the topic yet again, “So where have you been since your mysterious return?”

“None of your business,” he spits back. 

“I’m afraid it is.”

_ Oh _ , he changes his tone, “That depends, what’re you after?” 

“That entirely depends on the extent of your abilities,” he answers with a reply that borders on amicable.

He sighs, not wanting this man to know his whereabouts but, “Nicodranas, near the docks.” 

He seems to know exactly what he wants from that information, “Have you heard of Yussa Errenis?” 

“Sounds vaguely familiar,” he replies dismissively. 

“He’s a merchant mage, owns a good portion of Nicodranas. He has an interesting collection.”

“I assume you want me to steal something from him?” Trite but a little larceny is probably getting off easy.

“Something like that.”

“So what do you want?”

He leans forward on his elbows, the oil lamps and thin sheen of water on his face casting unnatural shadows on his face, “Bring me one of the deeds. Not to his tower, something small, that he won’t notice if it’s gone for a few days. Don’t do anything to it. Just get it to me. My people will handle it from there.”

He twists his head quizzically to the point where he knocks himself in the shoulder with a horn, “What do you want with Nicodrani deeds?”

“What do you want with a vial of your own blood?”

Fair question, he still hasn’t quite figured out what to do with it once he gets it anyway, “Fine.”

The Gentleman knocks a rhythm onto the wall of the booth behind him, “Keep this to yourself. This is only  _ your  _ job, don’t involve your friends.”

He gets a flare of defensiveness and feels the need to wedge in the last word before he’s dragged back out of the boot, “‘Friends’ is a bit generous.”

The Gentleman just laughs and calls back, “Your ‘old friend’ will keep an eye on you until you can figure out how to get home.” 

“Wait, what about my horse?!” he shouts as he’s pulled out of the room by his manacles.

He gets a hearty laugh for that one, “I heard it wasn’t yours?” 

He just fumes and lets himself be pushed around rather than making this worse for him. Even if he does let his tail thrash a little more than necessary behind him to bother any passersby and knock over what he can. He’s paraded through the underground bar where the Gentleman’s lackeys get to have a nice long look at him as he holds himself proudly despite how… less than impressive he looks as he’s guided by the manacles into the main bar where he’s uncuffed and pushed out of the side hall and into the bar itself.

Cree is seated at a table in front of him, staring him down from under the hood of her cloak. He sighs, they took everything off him anyway. What does he have to lose by sitting down with her while he waits for the Nein? He takes a seat, rubs the cramps and aches out of his wrists as the two of them stare each other down.

He pulls his legs up under him so he’s sitting cross-legged in his chair, tail slowly undulating behind him like a pendulum, “Hello.”

“You said you were lying about knowing me before.”

“Yup, although, I can’t say for sure. More just an educated guess. All I know about you is that you knew me, as far as anyone can tell, the first time around and your name.”

“So you really aren’t Lu-,” she starts.

“ _ Don’t! _ ” He cuts her off, “His body, and Mollymauk’s body but no, whoever your friend used to be, I’m sorry, under new management.”

Cree just scowls and traces nonsense patterns on the table, “You could have said something before. I would have understood. Hells I could’ve tried to help you!”

“I’d  _ like  _ to give you some sort of explanation but I honestly can’t. I’ve got some vague feelings of Mollymauk but aside from that, I don’t really know much. I can’t tell you why I didn’t tell you,” he sighs, matches her in the lack of eye contact, tracing the lines of the snake tattoo. Staring at the snake he gets an idea. He holds out his hand so that the red eye is in clear view, “Do you know what these eyes are?”

She hesitates but takes his hand, turns it over in her own to better inspect it, “Eyes?”

“The tattoos are meant to hide them,” he says plainly.

“I see,” her voice trails off.

“I think I remember this one, it didn’t have a tattoo on it though when I knew you. I have a theory,” she gives him a searching gaze.

“And that is?”

She raises a claw and perches it over the snake’s eye, “I’m going to prick you.”

“Care to tell me why?”

“If I’m wrong you’ll have nothing worse than a papercut,” her claw hovers over his hand.

The blood just underneath the skin of his hand is itching to escape him, can feel it pounding, “Alright then.”

She digs the claw into the eye just enough to break skin. Her mouth moves, saying something for sure but he can’t make out what. The bead of blood forming on the back of his hand suddenly coursed along the faint lines of his skin before turning to a layer of jagged ice with a crackling sound. In the time it takes for him to finally think of anything to say in response the heat of his skin has already melted it.

She leans back in her chair, “I can’t do that, but I remember you learning it, pretty simple, one of the first few things you learned.”

“What do you mean ‘learned’? Who taught me?” He leans forward on his elbows, over the table to follow her.

She smiles, self-satisfaction plain in the curl of her lips, “It's need-to-know, and you’re not him anymore.”

“But-!”

Her claws dig into the table, “You’re not him, therefore not your secrets. You don’t get to know.”

He drums his talons against the table as he thinks, “What’s a secret? Is where I’m from a secret.”

She rolls her eyes, “I guess not. I don’t know the exact place. Somewhere in the Marrow Valley, probably.”

And so it goes on like that for who knows how long. Back and forth trying to figure out what’s secret and what isn’t. There’s a vague mention of an ‘order.’ No explanation of what it is or even a proper name, just that apparently Lucien, Cree, and some others got tired of this ‘order.’ Of course, there are no names for the others in their little off-shoot. It gets to the point where they’re at this for so long they both end up getting a drink. They make a sort of game out of it. For every question that doesn’t have a secret for an answer, Cree takes a drink. For every question that has a secret for an answer he drinks. And if they kept going once they’d drained their mugs Caleb would have easily turned out the shit-faced one.

It’s sunset, orange-yellow light streaming through the windows of the bar when he hears the clamor outside. In a blur of color, the door is flung open to reveal the Mighty Nein who all but tackle him the moment they catch sight of him. He can’t make out what anyone’s saying, everyone speaking over each other. Jester catches his face in her hands and looks him over to check him for any injuries, seems satisfied in her inspection, and hugs him so tight it feels like she’s going to snap him in half. He scans the crowd to do a headcount. Beau and Nott are both trying to rapid-fire ask him questions about what happened, why did he leave without telling everyone, is he okay? Caduceus is hanging back by the door but Caleb and Fjord are just behind Nott, Jester, and Beau, trying to get a word in edgewise. Frumpkin is curled around Caleb’s shoulders and he has a shaking hand buried in his fur as what’s likely an outlet for the anxious nerves that must have been burning him away from the inside. Where’s-?

He finally manages to speak over them, “Where’s Yasha!”

As the others fall into an uneasy silence, Caduceus speaks up, “She’s waiting outside.”

“What?” He mutters and makes his way past the others and stops on the second step out of the door.

She’s standing there, painfully still, fists clenched at her sides. So tense there’s the most infinitesimal tremor to her.

“Yasha,” he casually calls her name, approaching from her right, putting a hand on her back.

She doesn’t respond, the color seeping out of her knuckles as her fists tighten.

“Yasha, Love? What’s the matter?” His hand moves to her arm and he circles around to her front and bends down to look up from under the curtain of her hair.

He just manages to catch the soft, strangled noise that escapes her.

“Hey now...what are those tears for?” He takes her hands, stands all the way back up, her hair catching comically on his head, “You know it’s very rude not to look someone in the eyes when they’re talking.”

She looks up to his gaze and puts a hand to his cheek, brushing against a horn, “Molly…?”

“Ja, ja?” 

She sinks down to her knees, gripping his shoulders, shaking openly now, “molly…”

He keeps holding onto her, starts to stroke her hair, “Hey...Yasha, come now...I’m sorry…,” he sinks down to his knees as well and clutches onto her as she clutches onto him, “I’m sorry it took me so long…”

It’s a shame that he’s not quite sure which ‘took me so long’ he means.

He doesn’t know how long they’re like that for but he finally starts to stand up, taking her hands, “Come on, let’s go home…” 

He wipes off his face on the heel of his palm, the tearstained skin of his cheeks betraying what the flat ruby of his eyes doesn’t.

He repeats it to himself numbly once they’re all settled in the cart, headed for the road, the only sound the rumbling of the wheels against the cobbles, “ _ let’s go home _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I've had that comic saved to my phone for the better part of a year waiting for a good opportunity to include that scene in a fic.


	10. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mighty Nein return to Xhorhas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhhhh so this took longer than anticipated but in my defense this chapter is 6.3k. I got stuck during the sleepover scene. For some clarification on timeline stuff, this is happening post-Xhorhaus, pre-Obann/Fjord Yeets His Sword. (Technically if Caleb can cast Teleportation Circle, Jester and Caduceus should have the spell slot for Greater Restoration but shhhhhhh)

The ride out of Zadash is quick, everyone promptly arranging themselves in and on the cart. Jester and Beau at the reins, Fjord and Nott at the back, and the rest of them squeezed in along the benches on either side. He and Yasha are pressed close together, holding each other’s hands though maybe just a hair tighter than comfortable but he just squeezes back harder. Caleb’s knees occasionally knock against his when they hit a rough patch in the road. Caduceus seems to avoid that problem by sitting in something that vaguely looks like side-saddle. Everything is uncomfortably quiet. Some light mumbling comes from the back of the cart now and then. Most of the sound just comes from the rumbling of the cart.

After a while, Beau pulls off to the side of the road, “Come on, ten-minute break. Out! Stretch! Piss! Whatever you need to do. Then we’ll switch off.”

“We can take the front next,” Nott offers.

“Cool!” Beau shouts over her shoulder as she wanders off for the treeline.

He just jumps off over the side and watches as the others meander. He regards the snake’s red eye on his hand where Cree had shown him the magic in his blood. The whole thing was unsettling. But there’s something there, and it’s worth learning how to use it. He brushes off the thought though as Yasha approaches him. She almost looks like nothing’s happened. Her resting face is a slight stoic frown but the slight bloodshot pink in her eyes still hasn’t cleared yet.

“I’m so-,” he starts.

“You should be. That was stupid, what were you thinking?” Her icy anger hits him.

“That I didn’t trust some strange crime boss to not do weird shit with my blood.”

“You made it sound like everything was okay, that you didn’t want to go back. Why did you go back, Caleb?” The recent tears lend her eyes a crystalline shine that emphasizes the anger and confusion in her mismatched eyes, a quiet fierceness that makes it feel like explaining himself to a stormcloud.

He steels himself, “I had unfinished business, I’m finishing it now.”

“You could have come to us, you didn’t have to do this on your own. We would have helped you.”

“I needed to handle it myself. This was _ my _business. I like all of you, but I’d started to patch together something resembling a life in Nicodranas and the last thing I needed was to risk that Gentleman fuck holding my blood over my head. I made a new life. I’m not here to be ‘the friend that died.’ He had a piece of me, multiple ties to who I’ve been before and I needed to take care of it. I am sorry though. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you lot what I was doing. I was being rash. That wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry. You already lost me once. I shouldn’t,” he lets out a long sigh, the charms in his horns tinkling lightly as he looks away, “have done that. I’ll never do it again. You have my word.”

She takes a step to follow his gaze, it sounds like some of her anger has simmered away, “I was terrified that we would get there too late, or that maybe it was an elaborate trick, ya know? I’m-, it’s good to see you’re safe.”

He takes her hand, “I won’t leave like that again. I promise, Yash.”

“It’s okay,” a thought seems to cross her mind, “Did you talk to that tabaxi woman?”

He chuckles, “Yeah, didn’t get much from her though. She froze my blood? That was something.”

“That’s...interesting,” she trails off.

He starts to speak again

but what she blurts out next erases the thought from his head, “Join us?”

“I-? Join you? You mean, travel with you?” He flounders for the words.

And his response is equally as hasty and blurted as her original question, “Yes.”

Jester suddenly comes in, “Are you coming with us?!”

Jester’s outburst catches the attention of the others. All of their eyes now fixed on his and Yasha’s conversation. Despite the weight of expectation he _ knows _ is there he doesn’t feel the pressure of it. It’s strange. But he considers it for a moment. _ Do it. Do it. _He’s been kind of aimless with no memory to guide him. He can spend the rest of his life in Nicodranas, submitting himself to the monotony of the everyday. Or he can set out into the unknown and live a different life each day.

He laughs, loud and long, throwing his head back, “Yeah, yeah why not? I’ll join you! Been needing a little craziness in my life.”

Jester hugs him so tight she lifts him straight up off the ground and spins around, “Yes! Oh, you’re going to love it! I promise! Oh, we need to get you armor! And sw_ oooords _! And we need to introduce you to Essek!”

“Who?” He tries to get out but she’s squeezing him tight enough he’s having trouble getting enough air to say anything with much volume.

She finally sets him down, “Oh you’re going to love him! He floats!”

He tries his best to not notice the suppressed excitement crackling like a fire in Widogast’s face, “Where? Where are we going anyway? Where is this Essek?”

Caduceus leans in against his staff, something that could be mischief about him but hard to tell through a thick layer of easygoing presentation, “Xhorhas.”

“Oh.”

The next several hours are filled mostly with explanations that occasionally have to shift into innuendo when the road gets busy. Not all of which he quite has the context to understand but what he _ does _glean from all of this is that the Gentleman was right, he is extremely lucky.

Because first thing tomorrow morning he is going to be in the tower of the merchant-mage, Yussa Errenis so that Widogast can use his teleportation circle and inquire about a few strange items they’ve found since last speaking to him. And there’s been chatter about various spells that they have or will soon be powerful enough to cast. They just need the materials for them, which could help him with his whole memory conundrum. How to get any stolen documents back to Zadash is going to be a challenge but at least he has an in to steal said documents. It’s well into the night when they make it back to the stable of the Withering Bird Inn and there’s a slight damper on the situation by the sight of the meager collection of belongings Caleb had accrued, dragged out of his room and dumped in the alley behind the inn.

He sighs and starts to shove as much as he can into his bag before the others can try to say anything, “It’s okay. I kinda saw this coming. But I guess this means I have to take you up on your offer from the other night though.”

Jester’s mind is visibly going a mile a minute as she thinks of all the things a sleepover would entail.

But Fjord clears his throat, cuts in, “We used to room together, I wouldn’t mind a repeat of that. So, uh, you, me, and Caduceus.”

There’s a bitter taste in his mouth at the memory of Fjord insisting just the other night that he wasn’t real and… not knowing what to do with that thought.

“You could always share with someone else, of course,” Caduceus suggests.

“No, no, I’m good. I’ll _ gladly _room with you Mr. Fjord,” the way he holds himself, shoulders back and squared, and the tilt of his head suggests that tonight is not going to be easy.

Instead of risking an angry innkeeper, Caleb rearranges the contents of his pack to make everything just barely manage to fit (though there’s still a blanket or two draped over his shoulders) and slings it over his shoulder before shimmying up the tree outside to the window of the room Fjord and Caduceus are sharing. He waits there a few minutes clinging onto the tree and waiting for one of them to open the window. It takes perhaps ten minutes for Caduceus to finally open the window and reach out a hand so he can shimmy along the branch and climb in. 

Fjord is standing off to the side working on getting his armor off, having found a particularly stubborn buckle on his gauntlet that doesn’t seem to want to come undone. On the whole, it doesn’t seem like he’s even noticed that Caleb’s come in yet.

He almost comically loudly clears his throat, “Want some help with that?”

“Oh shit!” he startles, finally notices there are three people in the room instead of two.

He saunters over and deftly finishes the buckles on his gauntlet and hands it back to him, “Good to see you too.”

“We need to talk, don’t we?”

“Something like that.”

He sighs, “Do you mind if we take our armor off first?”

“I think you can multitask,” he backs up until he’s sitting on one of the beds.

“What do you want to know?” His voice gets muffled for a second or two as he works the leather breastplate off over his head.

He looks him dead in the eyes, unflinching, “Do you think I’m Mollymauk?”

Fjord stops, an ashy pallor in his face now, “I recognize you. You have all the same piercings and tattoos an’ such. I think you _ were _Mollymauk. I don’t know who you are now. I’m sure the others think we can get your memories back but honestly-,” he cuts himself off, “No, nevermind. Bad question. Just forget it.”

“No, I won’t forget it. ‘But honestly’ what, Fjord?” He insists.

“But _ nothing _ . I said what I said,” he holds his ground and his gaze. “I can tell ya _ all _you want about what happened before if that’s what ya want.”

If he’s not going to get anywhere with his actual question he might as well take advantage of having people around who will actually answer his questions about the past. “Fine. Yasha told me about the ‘long may I reign’ thing. How did that work? Logistically?”

“It didn’t. I sat in the hall eating an apple until the others invited me into their room,” he tries to maintain a gruff, annoyed demeanor but the fact that he’d died not long after seems to take the bite out of it.

“So I take it I was a bad roommate?”

“I don’t know what you have against pants,” he grumbles as he plops himself down to sit on one of the beds.

“I don’t have anything against pants. Not too worried about modesty, not the same thing,” he corrects.

“Same thing in practice,” Fjord starts to squirm under his gaze now, staring at the wood grain of the floor instead of meeting his eyes, “Humored me though.”

“Who’s the better roommate? Me or Caduceus?” He teases.

Caduceus cuts in, “I’m not sure if that’s a fair question.”

“Just curious,” he shrugs it off.

Fjord takes advantage of the distraction to change the subject, “Jester was wrong earlier. We don’t need to get you a new sword. I uh, I’ve still got the Summer’s Dance. It’ll take me an hour but you can have it back if you want.”

“Summer’s Dance?” 

“I don’t think it’ll look like this once I’m not bonded to it anymore but,” Fjord flicks his wrist and a golden scimitar appears in his hand, what he thinks is a carved crystal in the crossguard suddenly blinks.

He laughs off his surprise, “That’s quite the sleight of hand, you have a promising career as a stage magician.”

Fjord rolls his eyes and flicks his wrist again to make it disappear, “I can get it back to you tomorrow, don’t worry, I’ll still have a sword.”

He notices Fjord’s gaze drifting off elsewhere, past his shoulder. He peers over his shoulder to follow his gaze and sees Caduceus meditating, sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding his staff with his head tipped down and eyes closed. He looks back and forth at them. Is he interrupting something? What would he even be interrupting? 

“Scuse me,” he chimes up.

“Right, sorry, got to thinking about something, little distracted,” Fjord’s face starts to flush a ruddy copper color, “Been a long day, gonna go wash up and turn in. Oh, uh, do you wanna bed or?”

He pats his bag, “I can manage with the floor.”

“If you’re sure,” Fjord mumbles before wandering out to the inn’s washroom.

He waits for Fjord’s footsteps to fade down the hallway before addressing Caduceus.

“What was that about?”

Caduceus smiles and it’s weird, not bad, just weird like he knows so much more than he should, “He’s curious.”

“About?” He prompts him to continue.

Caduceus just shrugs, “I don’t know… me? The Wildmother? Just meditation?”

“Why would he be-?”

“Well, he seems convinced that I’m a mindreader, for one,” an amused, fond smile fills his face, “but anything else is his own business until he decides to share it.”

“Right, I suppose so,” he’s cut off from his next thought by the sudden yawn that hits him.

By the time Fjord comes back from the washroom, he’s already set out his bedroll with a few extra blankets tucked underneath it and crawled in to finally get some rest. But of course the moment all the lights are doused and he’s gotten comfortable he can’t find sleep anymore. It’s just out of his grasp and instead, he’s juggling the five million questions rattling around in his head that he’d forgotten about with everything else going on. Though with the context of present company, especially the soft rumble of Caduceus’s snoring as background music, it’s easier to focus on questions about the two of them. Would Fjord feel more or less guilty if he could confidently say that he wasn’t Mollymauk? Caduceus seems fairly certain that he isn’t Mollymauk, or at least that even if he is, it doesn’t matter too much given his present state.

Morning comes eventually and he spends several minutes trying to repack his stuff with eventual success. He manages to find a loose blank piece of paper and folds it in thirds like a letter before tucking it into his sleeve. And the walk to Tidepeak Tower is easy, for once. He’d tried going to it once or twice just to check it out and found himself never actually getting any closer. But now, now he can actually make it to the front door. It’s got to be a spell of some sort that knows who is and isn’t allowed to approach. 

Widogast is the one to knock on the door and announce their presence. They have to wait a minute or two before the door swings open, revealing a finely dressed goblin man on the other side. The goblin man lights up with surprise and recognition when he sees who his visitors are.

“Oh! You’re here! How may I help you?” The man has a nervous edge to his voice.

“Hallo Wensforth, is Yussa home? We were hoping to check in with him before we left the city. We have a few items that we thought might interest him,” Widogast starts to rummage through his bag for presumably the items he’s referencing.

“I’m afraid you’ll need to wait for a little but yes, he’s here, just a little busy at the moment. Wait, there are more of you this time.”

Caleb slips to the front of the group and holds out a hand for him to shake, “Caleb, nice to meet you.”

Wensforth’s confused gaze jumps back and forth between him and Widogast, “Okay then. Well, come in. I’ll let Mr. Errenis know that you’re here.”

The goblin leads them into a finely decorated sitting room chock-full of stuffed bookcases before rushing off to find the man himself. Surprisingly they don’t have to wait long. Wensforth comes back after only a minute or two, a dark-skinned, middle-aged elven man in luxurious golden robes with white hair following behind him at a leisurely pace. He exchanges a brief, polite smile with the Nein, though it briefly flickers with confusion when his eyes settle on him. 

“I didn’t know you were recruiting,” Yussa jokes.

“Oh, no, it’s not that. I died. It’s okay. I’m back now, though. I’m Caleb by the way,” he offers up a hand for Yussa to shake.

Yussa seems confused but amused, “Oh, yes, I think they might have mentioned you when we first met. Um, congratulations on your return I suppose.

“Whoever has these items you’d like to show me, please, come with me to my study and we’ll look them over. The rest of you, stay here. We should not be gone long.”

Widogast, Caduceus, and Beau all get up from the couch and follow Yussa out and down the hall, their footsteps quickly disappearing from earshot, maybe a little faster than they should have. Nott and Jester chat softly among themselves. For a minute or two he can pass his antsy behavior off as impatience but he’s been trying to think of a perfect excuse to leave and go rummaging through the rooms of this godsdamned tower for fucking _ legal documents _ before Yussa and the others come back. When is he ever going to get an opportunity like this again? Clearly the Mighty Nein are in contact with Yussa but it doesn’t sound like they see him often. Well, it’s a pretty shitty excuse but quite frankly he doesn’t know enough about Tidepeak Tower and Yussa Errenis to think of a better one.

He leaves his bag behind to make sure to give the impression that he’s coming back, “Be right back, loves.”

“Where are you going?” Nott asks.

“Bathroom!” He says in a sing-song, already gone.

Caleb immediately hastens his pace and sticks his head through every unlocked door he can find. A surprising amount of them are unused, just collecting dust. One seems to be an arcane supply closet of some sort, full of what he assumes are expensive consumed spell components, various gemstones, and other more esoteric items that he can’t immediately identify. Another room he thinks might be a pantry on first blush. The last few rooms he’s going to fast to properly identify any of them, he swears he sees another two sitting rooms, a lab, a bedroom that might be Wensforth’s judging by the size of the bed, and then finally Wensforth in the middle of organizing something. Fuck it, he barges in without giving it another thought.

“Oh! Can I help you?” Wensforth looks up from the desk covered with loose papers and the open, rich-looking wooden box.

He strides in like he’s supposed to be there, “Hello there! Went looking for the bathroom, might have gotten a little turned around.”

“Yes,” Wensforth doesn’t take notice as he gets closer to the desk, “the halls can get a little disorienting. I’m almost done here but I can show you where it is if you don’t mind waiting for a mo-.”

“AH!”

Caleb fakes a scream and jumps, his tail knocking most of the loose documents and the box off the table. Said box is heavier than expected, even partially emptied, and his tail is not particularly appreciative of this whole charade.

“Oh my gods,” he half-feigns the apology, “there was a spider on my shoe, I’m so fucking sorry, here, let me help.”

He falls down onto all fours and scrambles through the papers in desperate search of what he can recognize as a deed. He has a vague notion of what deeds look like, he happened to see the deeds to the Withering Bird once in the innkeeper’s office for a reason he can’t remember. He’s going more off recognition, he’s not a particularly strong reader, he’s been alive for less than a year and it wasn’t a skill he woke up with and he hasn’t had much time or interest to seriously improve. Wensforth is mumbling something, trying to insist that it was just an accident, he doesn’t need to do that. Which he resolutely ignores. Anything that isn’t what he’s looking for gets loosely tossed back onto the desk. Wensforth reaches for something at the top of the field of his vision and _ that _, that he recognizes. Half out of haste and half to get him out of the way, he lunges forward to grab the papers on that part of the floor and ends up hitting the poor man upside the head with one of his horns.

“Ah fuck! I am _ so _sorry!” 

And while Wensforth is distracted, eyes screwed shut in pain and cradling his probably-going-to-bruise temple and trying to fend off his attempts to ‘help’, he slips the blank pages tucked into his sleeve out into the pile and loosely folds the papers he’s after back into their new home up in his sleeve. Even shuffles together the papers even more before grabbing up most of them and taps them against the table to even out the stack and resting them back on the desk.

Wensforth gets his bearings back and pushes him out of the room, “Three rooms down the hall, take a right, second door on the left. Now, _ please _, leave. I am busy!”

The door is slammed behind him, nearly getting his tail, before he hears the lock click. Well, as much as the bathroom excuse had been a lie, actually using it will certainly help if anyone questions him. Not sure why anyone would but still. Either way, he has no clue what sort of effect magical travel has on the body and there are certain means of embarrassing himself he’s less than a fan of.

By the time he finally makes it back to the sitting room where Fjord, Yasha, Jester, and Nott have been waiting he can hear Yussa returning with the others, the sounds of their footsteps suddenly appearing out of nowhere. 

Yussa must have noticed him coming back in, “What-?”

“Bathroom, got a little lost on the way,” he plops himself casually down onto the couch between Fjord and Yasha, crossing his legs.

“Oh, yes, the interior can be similarly disorienting to the exterior if you are unfamiliar,” Yussa puts him out of mind and regards some sort of silvery device filled with something viscous. “Thank you for this.”

“You do not mind if we use the teleportation circle room upstairs?” Widogast asks out of courtesy.

Yussa simply waves them off, “Yes, yes, go ahead. Oh! A brief suggestion. You have two clerics, can either of you cast Greater Restoration? That might work for your friend’s memory troubles.”

Jester’s tail twists back and forth rapidly behind her, “That’s a really good idea! I can’t cast it yet but Caduceus?”

“Nope. Me neither, I’ll keep it in mind though,” Caduceus replies to her prompting.

The thought is well-meaning, but talking about him like he’s a problem to be solved puts a foul taste in his mouth. Widogast seems to notice his discomfort.

“Come on,” Widogast heads towards where he assumes the stairs are, “we should get going. We have been gone for long enough.”

They all head up the stairs to a circular room with magical paint on the tiles, forming an elaborate circle of arcane sigils. However, Widogast pulls out some opalescent chalk from the pouch on his belt and quickly scribbles a similar series of symbols on the ground before hurriedly rushing everyone through. He’d like to say that he doesn’t, but for a second, he hesitates, eyes flicking down at the brightly glowing circle on the floor, back up to Widogast who gives him an encouraging nod before jumping in.

Teleportation circles are certainly something that he’s going to have to get used to. It feels like a thin cord tied to his solar plexus yanking him through the ether. The ground disappears and reappears just as quickly, an inch beneath where they originally had been, just enough to make him stumble when he lands. One more _ poof _ sound and Widogast appears in the circle next to him. The others have already cleared the space and are waiting at the bottom of the small set of steps leading up to the platform that holds the teleportation circle. He’s a little dizzy when he tries to take a step, grabs onto Widogast’s shoulder to balance himself out while his body and brain make amends.

The guards, in wildly unfamiliar armor, just seem annoyed by their presence. Is this? Xhorhas, right? Jester had said they were going to Xhorhas. Holy shit is this Xhorhas? 

“Ah shit! The cart! We forgot about the cart!” Beau suddenly realizes.

  
  


The walk out of and from the Lucid Bastion to the, he heard someone call it the Xhorhaus, is just long enough for him to gawk at the city of Rosohna. It had only been midmorning when they left but it’s pitch-black night here, the streets lit up by gas lamps. Mostly drow fill the streets though he notices a handful of goblins here and there, even a tiefling or two as they go on their way. He notices the passersby's gazes holding on Beau and Widogast for a beat or two longer than the rest of them but they go on unfettered. Oh, that must be the Xhorhaus. It’s a large house in what appears to be one of the nicer neighborhoods of Rosohna with a giant tree covered in lights growing on top of a small tower. Jester immediately runs to the door and throws it open, running inside, Beau and Nott hot on her heels. He follows along up through the threshold of the house.

Jester pokes her head through the door from what looks like a living room (what little he can make out over her shoulders) back into the foyer, “Okay! Okay, so we need to figure out where you’re going to sleep Cay-leb.”

Nott tugs on the billowing sleeve of her dress, “Didn’t you say you wanted to talk to Essek?”

“Ooo! Yes! One second!” Jester makes a few quick gestures he can’t quite track with his eyes, “** _Essek!_ ** We are back in Rohsohna and we need to talk to yooouuuu! Something happened! Please come as soon as you can!”

Fjord mouths ‘three words.’  
Jester finishes it off by going, “Do do do!” There’s a pause before she passes along this Essek person’s reply, “He says he’s busy but he’ll come over as soon as he can.”

“You never really explained who Essek is,” Caleb tries to prompt her.

“He’s the Shadowhand!” She puts a bit of a verbal flourish on the title. “He wears this cool mantle! And he floats! _ I mentioned the floating. _He’s like, the spymaster to the Bright Queen! He’s a super-powerful wizard! Way more powerful than Caleb, no offense.”

“None taken. He would not have much to teach me if I were more powerful than him,” Widogast replies, gesturing for Caleb to follow after as he steps further into the house.

The house doesn’t look terribly lived-in but that tracks considering they’re adventurers. There’s a small amount of tchotchke accumulating here and there: a houseplant, some figurines, scattered books. They rush him through the house, pointing out and directly showing him around the kitchen, dining room, some sort of library thing, a training room, war room, ‘happy room (? not quite sure what that is)’, and Jester eagerly guides him straight up the tower stairs to that garden where the tree he saw before is and promptly back down into the basement where there’s an entire fucking _ spa _, including a hot tub built into the roots of the tree. It’s not until they’re pointing out whose rooms are where that he realizes he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to sleep now that he’s here. 

Jester seems to realize it too, “This is my and Beau’s room. That’s the guest room. Do you-? Oh, wait, no, Dairon’s using it. Hmm.”

Widogast speaks up from the back of this little impromptu tour group, “You can stay in my room if you’d like.”

“No, I’m not going to steal your room. I saw a perfectly nice couch with my name on it,” he insists.

“And I do not mind spending a night on that couch while we figure out a space for you,” Widogast twists it around.

“Nope, not stealing your room. We can share if you’re that insistent on me taking it,” not that he means anything by it but he notices the blush eeking its way onto his cheeks, making them match his hair a little more. And he saunters off to follow Jester and Caduceus to the kitchen.

It turns out that ‘as soon as he can’ is maybe two or three hours after dinner. The knocking at the front door comes as he’s mid-sentence in some fairly unimportant conversation, some sort of anecdote about one of many barfights he’d gotten in the middle of.

“Come in!” Nott shouts at the top of her lungs so that their guest at the front door can hear her from up here.

There’s a soft sound of windchimes when the door opens but no footsteps coming up the stairs. The man who enters is exactly as described: a floating man in a mantle. Though in person he’s surprised by how _ young _the finely-dressed drow is. And it’s not that he hadn’t believed the fact that Essek can float, more just that it’s a thing he does often, not as his main mode of transportation.

“Hey man,” Beau says by way of greeting.

Essek tips his head, “Beauregard. What happened that you needed to talk to me about?”

“Nice to meet you,” Caleb says a little louder than necessary to grab Essek’s attention.

Essek immediately shifts his attention over to him, “I’m afraid we haven’t met.”

He gets up and crosses the room to stand across from him, maybe holding one foot a step too far out just to try and see if he’ll bump into one of Essek’s feet (he doesn’t), “I’m Caleb. The short version: I died, not dead anymore, don’t know why, pleasure to meet you.”

Essek has to pause for a moment, “Alright then.”

“Oo! I just had an idea! Essek!” Jester’s eyes light up with excitement and he’s honestly a little baffled how she can maintain such a high energy level, “Okay, so! Caleb.” She points at him. “He was our friend Mollymauk, _ but _before he said that he’d been someone else that he couldn’t remember and when he woke up he’d been buried!”

Essek gets comfortable on a couch, “So he does not stay dead? I must admit, resurrection isn’t really my forte. You might want to consult a cleric.”

“Nonono! What if…..?” She holds on the question until everyone is focused solely on her, “So Caleb was in some sort of ritual before he died and became Mollymauk. What if...Molly was consecuted? Like, a bootleg consecution?”

Nott and Beau both perk up at the idea but Essek openly cringes at it, “No.”

“Why not?” Jester insists.

“Consecution is a closely guarded secret of the Dynasty. There is no such thing as a ‘bootleg’ consecution. Besides, consecution is the resurrection of the person, not the body. No one who follows the Luxon fiercely enough to be familiar with all of the details of consecution would ever dream of divulging those secrets to an outsider of the faith or the Dynasty.”

“Well, it’s a _ bootleg _ though. Just being a recognizable copy is kind of the whole point of a bootleg,” Beau defends the theory.

Essek seems to physically rein in the urge to roll his eyes, “I suppose someone **could **have heard of consecution and tried to reverse engineer something similar. But it would not be consecution. Amanuesis is essential to the cycle of consecution and from what you described, Caleb has no memory of any previous lives.”

“Well...,” Jester’s fidgeting with her hands as she thinks on her feet, “you said that happens when you’re like, a teenager. Molly said he’d only been Molly for three years, maybe he would’ve started remembering his old life on his own if he’d lived another ten years or so?”

Essek sighs but concedes, “I suppose it is possible. Not plausible but I suppose it **could **have happened.”

“Did Cree tell you anything about that weird ritual thing?” Beau asks.

Caleb perks up, having gotten comfortable sitting back and watching Jester work on her theory, “What? No, uh, couldn’t really get much out of her.”

“Shit. Well, if it was a half-assed consecution maybe that’s why it killed you.”

The conversation rambles on for a little longer, trying to flesh out the bootleg/botched consecution theory but it seems like they’ve already worked out the main points. Although in the end he can’t help but sit there and think about the fact that, while he can understand from context and briefly mentioned details, _ he still doesn’t know what the fuck consecution is _.

Caleb takes advantage of Widogast asking if Essek could come to the study to discuss a more detailed question about magic to also break off from the group.

He moves over to the couch where Jester is and leans in a little to whisper, “Can you help me with something? It’s private.”

“Oh, okay,” concern furrows her brow but she follows when he slips out of the room to the patio.

Once he shuts the door behind him, “Can you send a message for me?”

“To who?”

“This stays between us.”

“Caleb, you don’t have to keep things secret.”

“Well, I want to keep it a secret. Can you send a message to the Gentleman?”

That does nothing to assuage her concern, “Is he blackmailing you?”

“No! I’m just wrapping things up with him. Can you just tell him that I have it? And ask how I’m supposed to get it back to him,” he describes the message for her.

“Caleb, what’s going on?”

“Very soon hopefully, nothing. Can you _ please _send the message?” He presses on.

She eyes him suspiciously, “Okay.”

“Thank you.”

She repeats the gestures she used to cast it earlier, “Hi dad!”

** _What?_ **

“Caleb says he has ‘it,’” she puts heavy air quotes on the word, “And he wants to know how he’s supposed to get ‘_ it _’ back to you.” She checks her word count and throws in, “Good niiiight.” She notices him staring, “What?”

“_ The Gentleman is your father? _”

She fidgets, curling her tail around her leg, “Well, I’m pretty sure. He _ says _he’s not my dad but with what I know about the Gentleman and what my momma’s told me about my dad, he has to be! Oh oh! He’s replying, be quiet!”

His tail taps against the banister as he waits for her to recount his reply.

“Go to the Gallimaufry tomorrow,” Jester’s face bunches up in confusion but she waits for a beat for the last of the spell to wear off, “The Gentleman knows about the Gallimaufry?”

“Where is it?”

“It’s like, a shopping district, there’s an archway and then you’re in there,” she starts to pace, trying to piece the new information together.

He grits his teeth but brings it up to steer the conversation away from this, “Um, thank you, for earlier. Not using,” he debates how best to describe it so she’ll get what he means, “my first name.”

“Of course! Yasha said, oh...oh, she probably wasn’t supposed to tell us, but she said that she said it to you that first night and it made you freak out. Maybe just a little like how Caleb is with fire? But it’s no big deal. I wouldn’t want to make you freak out like that.”

He saves the off-hand comment about Widogast for later, “I never told her not to, it’s okay...thank you.”

One bone-crushing hug later and they go back inside. It seems like everyone else also shuffled off to do their own thing, or maybe wind down for the night. Though he notices Beau’s back in the doorframe and can make out the red hair in front of her.

She’s talking in a harsh whisper, “Look, I’m not saying you have to tell him _ now _ or ever even but you’re probably going to have to tell him eventually. Even if he somehow gets his memories back, you never told him back then. Are you really going to go back to hiding them all the time?”

“I know, I know, believe me, Beauregard I **know**. I will, I will tell him eventually but we have only had him back for a few days now. If he asks, I will tell him,” Widogast matches the whisper though the urgency with which he says it makes it a little louder than likely intended.

He marches over to where he’d set his bag down against the wall and starts pulling out the tightly folded blankets to set up a bed on the couch. He vaguely notices the sound of Beau leaving in the background of his awareness when that distinct accent draws his attention.

“What are you doing?” Widogast asks from the other side of the couch.

“Making my bed,” he says nonchalantly before continuing on.

Widogast clears his throat, “I meant it earlier. You can take my room for the time being.”

“And I meant what I said. I’m not _ taking _your room. We can share if that’s what you insist.”

Widogast says it too quickly for him to have possibly had a moment to think it through, “Then I insist.”

“Alright then,” he throws the blanket across his shoulders, not one to back down, “lead the way, Mr. Widogast.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yes, this was an elaborate way to get around to 'And There Was Only One Bed'


	11. Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And there was only one bed...lol, yeah, there's that but also the two of them finally get a chance to stop and breathe and talk this shit out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it took eleven chapters but we're finally here....the soft shit. the specific set/arrangement of horn jewelry is based on my own Molly design so if you want a specific reference you can find it [here](https://luckypencilmangoesboop.tumblr.com/post/618336060300279808/dumb-little-doodle-of-a-revived-molly-design-for-a) and [here](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz1OxL4AgHY/). btw if you've left a comment on any of my stuff in the past month? maybe two months? i am so sorry, i get horribly anxious about checking my comments. General warning for some Caleb backstory stuff and descriptions of scars.

Widogast’s room is connected to the little laboratory/study and is surprisingly homey in contrast to the rest of the Xhorhaus. A writing desk against the wall opposite the bed is cluttered with notes, books, a broken quill or two, an inkwell whose contents have a slightly magical shimmer to them, and what looks like a little porcelain cat serving as a paperweight. It’s obscured by the chair in front of it but there’s a small cushion covered in cat hair underneath the desk. The walls aren’t particularly adorned, but there is a little glass globe hanging from the ceiling, filled with a similar glowing liquid to the lanterns in the tree that washes over the room in a slight orange-yellow glow. The thick wool blanket on the bed looks enticingly warm.

Widogast steps past him to go drape his coat over the back of the chair, “You are okay with this?” 

“I’d hope you wouldn’t offer to do something you weren’t okay with.”

“I asked if _you _were okay with this,” Widogast persists.

He sighs as he sets his bag back down against the wall, “I wouldn’t offer to do something I wasn’t okay with.”

“Alright then,” Widogast unbuckles some sort of book holster contraption from his chest and carefully puts them on the desk.

While Widogast’s back is to him, he crouches down and slips the stolen documents into a pocket sewn on the inside of the pack before shucking off his shirt. Though he slows to a crawl once he gets to his head to avoid catching it on his horns or jewelry.

“Would you like some help with that?” Widogast asks, now dressed down to just his shirt and pants.

“Hm?” He replies, shirt still half over his head.

“Your jewelry.”

“Oh! Yes, thank you. That would be great. All the little clasps and shit are tricky without a mirror,” he lets his shirt fall back down and sits on the edge of the bed.

Widogast hesitates for a second before crossing the room and standing between his knees. He tips his head down, offering up his horns. He pauses, hands hovering over his horns trying to decide where to start. He starts with the gold horn cap, applying just enough pressure and twisting a little to make it pop free and sets it down on the bed. He slowly makes his way along the length of his horns, working the little gem studs out, unclasps the tiny mechanism in the gold ring that hangs from a hole carved into his horn, back to taking out more studs.

Widogast stops, makes a small, considering noise in the back of his throat, “Did you lose one of them? There is an empty space where one of the studs should be.”

“Hm? Oh, no, I gave that one to Waywocket as a thank you,” his hand flits up to feel where the piercing used to be.

“Who?”

“Someone from Hupperdook, they helped me get to Nicodranas.”

“I will have to find some way to thank them. I don’t think our paths would have crossed if you had stayed there,” Widogast moves on to his other horn, his left one now bare.

“Did we go to Hupperdook back when I was Mollymauk?” He neglects to mention that the city had felt incredibly familiar, that he could now identify the echo of a gravelly laugh in his memory as belonging to Beauregard. 

“It was one of the last places we went before we lost you,” Widogast works the particularly tricky crescent moon charm out of his right horn.

“Ah, okay then,” he scoops up the small pile of jewelry once Widogast gets the last of it off.

Widogast notices him freeze up a little once he’s put all the charms and baubles back in his bag, voice gentle, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he springs back up to stretch, going onto tiptoes, arms thrown over his head, and tail flicking a little behind him.

When he turns back around, Widogast is lying on his side along one edge of the bed, purposefully giving him a wide berth. He rolls his eyes but hey, if that’s what he wants, he can respect that. Lying down with a faux-dramatic sigh, he puts his back to him.

With another loud sigh, Caleb turns onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, “I know that you’re worried about boundaries and all that but it kind of defeats the purpose of sharing the room if you won’t get close to me. Look, we started off on the wrong foot, you got all up in my business. I am _ asking _to be close to you. Trust me, I have absolutely no aversion to being close with people under normal circumstances. You don’t have to walk on eggshells with me.”

“Right, sorry… you are certain?”

“I wouldn’t offer to do something I wasn’t okay with, alright?” Letting his head flop over to one side to look at him he finds Widogast peering cautiously over his shoulder at him.

“Alright,” he turns over onto his other side so that they’re facing each other now.

In the gentle lamp-light, there’s a certain calm between the two of them. Caleb’s been back, by his count, for maybe three days, four at most. Though maybe right now it feels like longer because his life feels like it’s only lasted months. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it actually had been longer. He likes these people so far, and can understand why the previous him would have fallen in with them.

“What are you thinking about?” Widogast asks under his breath.

“Not much.”

He smiles and his eyes soak up the warmth of the lantern, the light not strong enough to wash out the blue of his irises, instead it saturates the color even more, “Surely you must be thinking about something.”

“Hmm, perhaps,” he props up his chin in his hand. And remembers. “Is everything okay? I didn’t catch everything earlier but Beauregard was chewing you out?”

Widogast reins in the impulse for his expression to fall, clawing onto the relaxed mood between them, “Nothing so dire. She is only looking out for me.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. It’s none of my business.”

“No, I-,” he stops, rethinks his words, “There is a lot I did not get to tell you before and I do not wish to repeat my mistakes. Um, not, I do not think I can give you all the details. But I think it’s important that you know.”

He puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder, “Okay.”

“Scheisse! Your hands are cold!” WIdogast flinches a little way away from it.

He chuckles a little at that. “Hmm, I suppose it’s a little drafty in here.”

“There is a perfectly good blanket underneath us if that is the case.” He trails off, “I do not remember you being this cold.”

He puts his hand back on his shoulder again, lingering for a second to actually take in the feeling, “You are _ boiling, _how are you not a sweaty mess?”

“I do not feel overly warm,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Mind warming me up?” He jokes, not really meaning much of anything by it.

“No,” there’s a slight blush coloring his cheeks.

“No?” 

Widogast’s brows twist together in confusion, “No?”

“No no?” 

He turns his head to muffle himself with the pillows, “You are a menace. Come here.”

“I know,” he smirks.

With that, he shimmies to cross the space between them on the bed and curls up against Widogast’s front and _ gods he’s warm _. A very cozy kind of warm that reminds him of a fireplace. He has to keep his head level with Widogast’s chest to keep from knocking him upside the head with his horns but he doesn’t particularly mind. The space right over his heart is so warm, seeping into his skin, makes him feel like he must be glowing like an ember.

Widogast rests a hesitant hand in his hair, “Are you alright down there?”

“Just peachy,” he muffles himself in Widogast’s shirt.

He seems to remember what they’d been talking about before they got distracted by their contrasting ambient body temperatures, “Um, what Beau and I were talking about?”

“Oh!” He pulls back a little so he can look up at him while still cuddling up nicely against his front, “yes, uh, you can tell me, if you want that is.”

“I do.”

“Floor’s all yours then,” he invites him to speak up.

Widogast sighs and tips his head forward to hide it in Caleb’s hair, “The um, the short version, is that um,” he sighs again to steady himself, “an evil man made my friends and I feel important and talented and he manipulated us into doing awful things and did awful things to us and in the end, I snapped.” Without prompting, Widogast rolls up his sleeves, revealing the marked flesh underneath, “Other people seeing these does not bother me as much anymore. I was mostly just worried about them being recognizable. And. And other things. But the fact that they are so distinct is the most important thing here.”

He puts his back to his chest so he can better look at the arms draped over him. Much to what he can only chalk up to his horror, the scars crawling up his forearms are patterned and a uniform length. There’s a sickening precision to them that makes his blood boil, claw at his skin out of anger. All he can get out past the unexpected flood of rage in his mind and heart acrobatics is a gravelly, “** _Fuck_ **.”

He laughs awkwardly, “I suppose.”

He wants to shake out of his skin and scream until his voice gives out.

He cranes his head over his shoulder to try and look at him, “Caleb?”

“Yeah, Caleb?” He chimes back to try and shake off the sudden wave of everything that had torn through his chest. Why the hells was he so angry?

“I’m sorry, was that too much?” Widogast’s blissfully warm hands are soothing down his scalp.

He forces himself to relax, “No, I’m good, promise.”

Widogast offers up a new question to keep his mind off of it, “What is it like? Starting over? From what I can gather you have only been alive the past few months, less than a year.”

“It doesn’t feel that short. You’re right but,” he shrugs, “feels longer than that I suppose.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. More than a year. Sometimes it’s weirdly easy to forget that I fucking woke up spluttering dirt and haven’t been serving sailors watered-down booze all my life. Well, I kind of have but as we can both tell,” he gestures vaguely at himself, “I clearly don’t have _ the body _ of someone less than a year old, I’m not a _ baby _.”

Widogast cards his fingers through his inky dark hair, “I am sorry we were not there. That sounds terrifying. My imagination cannot do such a thing justice.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself about it. How were you lot supposed to know that I was gonna get a little restless in the ground, hm? Not like I can remember any of you from before to be upset over it,” he turns in his arms again so that they’re face to face again.

“Do you really not remember _ anything _?” Widogast asks with an imploring look.

“Certain things feel familiar but no, not really. Hupperdook was eerily familiar, the fireworks especially and I suppose I know why now. I’ve got muscle memory,” he says with a smirk.

“You must remember something! _ You-! _” Widogast cuts himself off, cheeks turning a shamefaced crimson.

“My name?” He fills in.

“...ja.”

“It,” he hesitates, deciding if he wants to show this hand, “was the only name I could remember. I didn’t recognize it as _my _name but it was the only one I knew, so gotta work with what I’ve got.”

Widogast looks at him like it hurts.

Instead of dwelling on it he half-jokingly marches on, “Which, this whole ‘having two people with the same name in the group’ thing is really proving to be a fucking pain in the ass. One of us really ought to go by something else. Probably me though. No offense, the name really does suit you, but not so much me and also I kind of just took it I guess?”

There’s a flicker of carefully measured hope in Widogast’s eyes, “Are you going back to Mollymauk?”

“No, uh, I’ll stand by my word, Yasha’s still allowed to call me Molly but it feels a bit too much like wearing a dead man’s clothes if you catch my drift.”

He sighs, “Ja, I understand. Do you have another name in mind?”

“Nope!”

“Um, ah,” he tries to think of names through a looming fog of sleep, “Lark? Morrigan? Um? There is? Uh?”

“Why the bird names?”

“Well mollymawks are a bird, might as well have a theme. Not that, you do not have to take any of my suggestions,” he backpedals. 

“Hm,” his tail swishes a little behind him as he thinks, “I like the idea of having a theme. Uh…” not that he knows many birds that also make for good names.

“You do not have to figure it out right away,” Widogast mumbles, trying to ward off his own exhaustion.

He suddenly springs up to sit on his heels, “OH! OH!  _ What’s the name of the bird that catches fire?! _ ”

“The bird that…? Do you mean a phoenix?”

“YES! THAT!”

“You want to be called Phoenix?”

“I can at least take it for a spin.”

Widogast reaches up to cup his cheek in one hand, fondness burning in his eyes, “It suits you.”

“Thanks,” he preens a little, trying to ignore that nervous flutter in his chest.

“You know, Nott suggested we make up a new name for you in the note. I do not know how sincere she was being but we decided against it.” It’s unfair how cute Caleb looks when he’s trying to stay awake. What normally might have come out morose is softened by exhaustion, “Did you bring the note with you?”

Of course he brought the note with him. Why wouldn’t he? He’d been promised answers, given the promise of memory. And he was supposed to leave that in Nicodranas? No, it’s burning a hole in his pack next to the pilfered papers. So what if the thing is unintelligible regardless of literacy and bringing it is a little pointless from a practical standpoint?  _ It was the first bit of proof he had that whoever’d left him buried on the side of the road had cared about him, hadn’t tossed him callously in the dirt to get rid of him. That someone had cared enough to think ahead, try to prepare him for the road that laid ahead of him. _

He doesn’t say that though.

_ _

Instead, he just says, “Yeah.”

Caleb squeezes his hand where it rests next to him on the bed, “Gut, I can read it to you in the morning.”

“Do you think that’s gonna make me remember everything?” Oh, that came out wrong, a lot harsher than he’d meant it.

Caleb’s mostly-shut eyes open, the cobalt of his eyes searching his expression for the best answer he can give, “I do not think that it will, will make everything come back to you all at once. They will not be  _ memories _ , but you will know.”

He chuckles a little too loudly, trying to play it off cool, “Well, if Jester’s right, not a problem. It’ll come back to me eventually.”

“In thirteen or so years,” he deadpans. “Assuming that her theory is correct.”

“You don’t believe her?”

“It is not that I do not believe her. Though I do agree with Essek, I don’t know how it could have happened but I can’t think of anything better. From the sound of it there was no one around to have possibly cast any sort of resurrection spell on you,” he cuts himself off with a massive yawn, “I can do some research though. And I can probably rope Essek into helping me. Should the theory prove true, I am sure his superiors will want to stop whoever is performing bootleg consecutions willy nilly across Wildemount.”

He lies back down and nudges his shoulder, “Hey, don’t nod off just yet. I’m not done with you.”

“It is late,” Caleb tries to protest.

“One last thing,” he says in his sweetest pleading voice.

He sighs, nods.

“What was I to you? And where is this going? Because I’m not opposed, and I’m a little curious, whatever happens, happens,” he doesn’t bother to mask the eagerness in his eyes as he waits for his answers.

“Then I hope fortune will be kind to the both of us,” Caleb wraps an arm loosely around his waist, holds him close, where his wonderful fireplace warmth washes over him.

He falls asleep to that warmth, the lantern above them both fading out as they fall asleep. When he drifts off he nuzzles a little closer. Caleb’s hands are warm and steady where they rest on his arm and back. It’s peaceful, the only sounds that of their own light, slow breathing, and the pitter-patter of rain hitting the window-panes. 

He wakes up before Caleb and luckily getting up and out of his arms doesn’t wake him up. Just sitting there for a moment against the headboard he can swear he had a dream, that he’s supposed to remember something important from it. But he shakes off the feeling and goes to his pack, quickly getting dressed. Tucks the papers into his boot, securing them against his leg as he does up the laces. He almost makes it to the door before he stops and looks over his shoulder at the sleeping man still so soundly asleep. The voice that says things in his voice, Mollymauk’s old thoughts presumably, is quiet. It’s okay. He’s coming back, it’s just a quick errand within the walls of the city. Still, he pops back to the side of the bed and gives him a quick peck on the cheek, tucking his unruly copper hair back behind one ear, before leaving properly.

Much to his surprise, he can smell something cooking when he steps out of the room and then out of the laboratory. Following the smell leads him upstairs to where Caduceus is already up and fixing breakfast.

“Ah! Good morning, sleep well?” Caduceus’s ear flicks when he hears him come in and looks up to see him standing in the doorway.

“Very,” he casually leans in the doorframe, “quick question. How do you get to the Gallimaufry from here? Need to run a quick errand.”

“Are you going by yourself? I’m sure no one will mind showing you how to get there.”

“No, it’s okay, thanks. 

I can do this myself…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the plot break


End file.
